Girlfriend on Mars By Deborah Willis Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2023 $34.00 / 9780670069583 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * With a nod and wink, Vancouver’s Deborah Willis titles her story about a preposterously engineered mission to terraform Mars Girlfriend on Mars. The wonderfully lightweight word “Girlfriend” plays with the discrepancy between the gravity of a real…
Read more 1919 Mars, mirth, metadata
Artists and Their Autobiographies from Today to the Renaissance and Back: Symptoms of Sincerity by Charles Reeve New York: Routledge, 2023 $128.00 (USD) / 9780367221324 Reviewed by John O’Brian * In 1968, Andy Warhol was shot in his New York studio. Valerie Solanas fired twice from close range at his chest with a handgun, and…
Read more 1918 Seeing lives behind the art
New Millennium Boyz By Alex Kazemi New York: Permuted Press, 2023 $37 / 9781637583913 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * In some ways, Brad Seela is a typical seventeen-year-old white boy coasting through an apathetic life in the suburban North America of 1999: bored with school, indifferent about the future, disillusioned with his yuppie parents, susceptible…
Read more 1917 Teenage wasteland, Y2K bromance
Reuniting with Strangers By Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $22.95 / 9781771623582 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio has written an engaging novel that tells the stories of the reunification of Filipino caregiver families over one Canadian winter. She has done this in an engaging and most unique way; not simply…
Read more 1916 Migratory Filipinos scraping by in Osoyoos, Sarnia, and Iqaluit
Laundering the Dragon–Black Renminbi By John D’Eathe Vancouver: Adagio Media, 2021 $17.99 / 9781999433918 Reviewed by Valerie Green * John D’Eathe has written what is described as “a contemporary melodramatic novel” set in recent times about a current day problem in the powerful, international financial business world. D’Eathe begins his book with an…
Read more 1915 Money laundering and melodrama
The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere by Paulette F.C. Steeves Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021 $30 (USD) / 9781496234704 Reviewed by Robert (Bob) Muckle * One of the most popular topics in archaeology of the americas is that often phrased as “the peopling of the americas,” which includes interest in the timing and…
Read more 1914 Indigenous archaeological perspective
TL;DR: A Very Brief Guide to Reading and Writing in University by Joel Heng Hartse Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023 $24.95 / 9780774839143 (paperback) Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * There’s been a revolution in the teaching of composition. In my day (but this was back in another century) the focus was on The Essay, or what…
Read more 1913 Back to school
Before Combustion By Nicholas Bradley Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2023 $23.95 / 9871554472543 Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon * The title of Nicholas Bradley’s new book, Before Combustion, is drawn from a line in his poem, “Self-portrait in Lycra Skinsuit,” where the poet considers a schism in his cyclist persona. There’s the familiar self who, enveloped in…
Read more 1912 Fire, ash, and regrowth
The Animal in the Room By Meghan Kemp-Gee Toronto: Coach House Press, 2023 $23.95 / 9781552454602 Reviewed by Jane Frankish * In The Animal in the Room, Meghan Kemp-Gee develops a poetics of the Anthropocene. In fact, this collection of poetry can be seen as a compendium of reflections on the age of human impact. …
Read more 1911 A ‘strange convergence of animal and human personas’
Canada’s Place Names & How to Change Them by Lauren Beck Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2022 $34.95 / 9781988111391 Reviewed by Jeff Oliver * Is it possible to read a nation’s history through its place names? Lauren Beck’s new book Canada’s Place Names & How to Change Them makes a compelling case for it. This…
Read more 1910 What’s in a name?
Bookworm By Robin Yeatman Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2023 $23.99 / 9780063273009 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * It’s hard to understand why Victoria, the bookworm in Robin Yeatman’s debut novel, marries Eric. She doesn’t seem to have known him well before joining her life to his and is utterly miserable with him. Victoria spends most of…
Read more 1909 Regimented and tedious in Montreal
The White Light of Tomorrow By Russell Thornton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2023. $22.95 / 9781990776533 Reviewed by Al Rempel * There’s a fire at the heart of Russell Thornton’s poetry, and it burns fiercely in his latest book, The White Light of Tomorrow. Thornton’s poems have a deep elemental underpinning and William Carlos William’s…
Read more 1908 Bright and invisible and true
Called by the North: Extraordinary Adventures of the Fur Trade, Shipbuilders, Navigators and Traders in Northwestern Canada and Alaska by George H.S. Duddy Maryland: Heritage Books, 2022 $44.95 / 97807884240097 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * This book is an extraordinary feat of research and writing. It is especially significant as the Arctic has become the…
Read more 1907 The legacy of a shipwright
The Get: A Crime Novel By Dietrich Kalteis Toronto, ON: ECW Press, 2023 $26.95 / 9781770416840 Reviewed by Bill Paul * It’s 1965 and two street-wise Jewish hoods in Toronto, Lenny Ovitz and Gabe Zoller, hope to make bundles of money investing in a run-down tenement block near St. James Town. They’ve caught “wind that…
Read more 1906 The undoing of Lenny Ovitz
Almost Brown: A Mixed Race Family Memoir by Charlotte Gill Toronto: Penguin RandomHouse, 2023 $36 hardcover / 9780735243033 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * The author of various fiction and narrative non-fiction titles, including the tree-planting memoir Eating Dirt, Sunshine Coast-based Charlotte Gill is a gifted storyteller. Her new memoir explores how the author’s self-image and…
Read more 1905 Stuck in the middle with you
The Sum of One Man’s Pleasure By Danial Neil Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press, 2023 $22.95 / 9781774390788 Reviewed by W.H. New * The narrator of Danial Neil’s sixth novel, The Sum of One Man’s Pleasure, is an Irish-born Canadian named Finn Kenny, who has come to a point when he feels he must make his…
Read more 1904 Quiet detail within a stylistic mix
The Postmedia Effect: How Vulture Capitalism is Wrecking Our News by Marc Edge Vancouver: New Star Books, 2023 $25.00 / 9781554201976 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Notice how your local newspaper isn’t quite what it used to be? Maybe there are fewer local news stories reported. Maybe it’s no longer serving as a watchdog at…
Read more 1903 Corporate media bad guys
Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature, and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country by Steven C. Beda Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2023 $24.95 (USD) / ISBN 9780252086823 Reviewed by Gordon Hak * The book title might suggest that there is little of interest here for British Columbia readers, who often do not…
Read more 1902 Knowing the forest
A Man and his River: A 25-year Love Affair with a Wild Island Waterway by D.C. Reid Surrey: Hancock House, 2022 $24.95 / 9780888397287 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * The Nitinat River, cutting through the thick jungle which separates the west coast of Vancouver Island from the majority of its inhabitants, is hardly the region’s…
Read more 1901 A hydro hagiography
Red Dust and Cicada Songs by Mary Bomford Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $26.00 / 9781773860916 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * African memoirs continue to enjoy a reading vogue with Mary Bomford’s account of her five-years working as a young “idealistic CUSO volunteer” teacher in newly-independent Zambia offering another insightful perspective. Chilliwack-raised in a large…
Read more 1900 Learning more than she could teach