The Dating Plan by Sara Desai Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $22.00 / 9780593100585 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * A software engineer and her brother’s childhood best friend, Daisy and Liam, have a complex history of attraction and heartbreak. When they run into each other after years spent pursuing their own lives and…
Read more 1573 A pick-me-up romance
Larder by Rhona McAdam Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781773860831 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Although Canada may be a very big country, its literary community is relatively small. And if you narrow that group further to the community of poets – or, further yet, to BC poets – as a reviewer (and…
Read more 1572 Food for the soul
Skookum Raven by Heather Haley Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2021 $23.95 / 9781771713900 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * I always start my first-year literature class by writing “Poetry” on the whiteboard and asking students what words or phrases the word evokes in them. Typically, their responses are in line with the prevailing public opinion of poetry,…
Read more 1571 Stoking the word engine
Test Piece by Sheryda Warrener Toronto: Coach House Books, 2022 $22.95 / 9781552454497 Reviewed by Michael Turner * Back in the 1990s there existed a tension in Vancouver poetry between language-oriented writers, mostly those associated with the Kootenay School of Writing (KSW), and practitioners of spoken word, some of whom could be found sharing stages…
Read more 1570 A rare and necessary book
Minerva’s Owl: The Bereavement Phase of My Marriage by Carol Matthews Calgary: Freehand Books, 2021 (first published by Oolichan Books, 2017) $17.95 / 9780889823259 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Carol Matthews’ memoir Minerva’s Owl is not a happy book, but it is one full of hope and tenderness told with the author’s beautiful prose skills….
Read more 1569 Loss, wisdom, bereavement
Atacama by Carmen Rodríguez Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing (Roseway), 2021 $22.00 / 9781773634777 Reviewed by Alma Lee * In the north of Chile in the early 1920s, in a small mining town called Tacna, strikes are taking place in response to crushing control by the military and wealthy fascistic oligarchs. Atacama is a historical…
Read more 1568 Lucía and Manuel
What’s in it for Me? by LS Stone Nanoose Bay: Rebel Mountain Press, 2021 $13.95 / 9781999241681 Reviewed by Cassidy Lea * How many teens would like to spend their summer shovelling never-ending piles of elephant manure for free? What, no takers? Not even in a third world country? LS Stone’s main character, fifteen-year-old Nick…
Read more 1567 A Kenyan interlude
All I Stole from You by Ava Bellows Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Harper Perennial), 2022 $23.99 / 9781443466806 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * The “you” of the title in Ava Bellows’ debut novel, All I Stole from You, is Ingrid, wife of Rob, with whom Maggie, the narrator, has an affair. Right off the bat, relationships…
Read more 1566 A particular kind of life
Lady Jail (The Émile Cinq-Mars Thrillers Book 9) by John Farrow London, UK: Severn House (Canongate Books), 2021 £20.99/ $28.99 (U.S.) / 9780727890733 Reviewed by Bill Paul * Imagine you’re a writer of crime fiction living in Québec and you give a reading of your work at a women’s prison 80 kilometres north of Montréal….
Read more 1565 Émile Cinq-Mars no. 9
Reading the Water: Fly Fishing, Fatherhood, and Finding Strength in Nature by Mark Hume Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2022 $34.95 / 9781771645690 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Fishing for “home water.” About a dedicated fisher-father and his metaphor for life Ever hear of a Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear? How about a Mickey Finn? A Pumpkin Head…
Read more 1564 Fishing for home water
How to Love Your Neighbor by Sophie Sullivan New York: Macmillan (St. Martin’s Griffin Press), 2022, distributed by Raincoast Books $22.99 / 9781250624185 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * In How to Love Your Neighbour, Sophie Sullivan uses classic genre tropes to create a unique and heartwarming story about home renovation and falling in love. How…
Read more 1563 The surfer next door
Allow Me: Poems, 2000-2020 by Rhonda Batchelor Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2022 $23.95 / 9781771714488 Reviewed by Doug Beardsley * A deep sense of longing permeates between the lines of Rhonda Batchelor’s latest book. With longing we can lose sight of what is so close — until it is suddenly taken away and love becomes something…
Read more 1562 Red is still listening
We Want What We Want by Alix Ohlin Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781487004897 Reviewed by Laurie Ricou * In “FMK”, the eighth of the thirteen stories in this collection, Sonia accompanies her partner Cat, a hospice nurse, to a funeral for someone she does not know. There she drags six-year-old Jake…
Read more 1561 Teased into speculation
Ticket to Ride (Volume 4 of the Jason Davey Mysteries) by Winona Kent Winona Kent and St Ives, UK: Blue Devil Books, 2022 $19.99 / 9781777329433 Reviewed by Valerie Green * I must admit that I was not expecting to enjoy Winona Kent’s book Ticket to Ride as much as I did. A story about…
Read more 1560 Return of Figgis Green
Junie by Chelene Knight Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2022 $23.00 / 9781771667685 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * Strangers to Vancouver or its history before the city’s breakneck condo-ization might wonder about “the Village,” the comfortable place June-Anne Lancaster—the protagonist of Chelene Knight’s appealing first novel — affectionately sees as her hometown. In the vicinity of Main…
Read more 1559 Coming of age in Hogan’s Alley
Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade by Rosemary-Claire Collard Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2020 $24.95 (U.S.) / 9781478010920 Reviewed by Susan Nance * The traffic in wild and captive-bred exotic animals is estimated to be the world’s fourth largest illegal trade—after drugs, human trafficking, and counterfeit products — in…
Read more 1558 Animal farms
Kuroko a play by Tetsuro Shigematsu Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2020 $18.95 / 9781772012699 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I wouldn’t liken making fun of Tolstoy to a sport, but it is, surely, a reliable source of amusement, which likely sounds disrespectful; therein lies the amusement. All that to say, when Tolstoy wrote “All happy families are…
Read more 1557 Better than real life
Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir by Alan Dennis Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $25.99 / 9781039107984 Reviewed by Ron Dart * I have had an ongoing interest, the last few decades, in the life and philosophic vision of Dolores LaChapelle. LaChapelle’s early pioneering work with Arne Naess in deep ecology and her deep powder skiing insights were…
Read more 1556 Tales of the avalanche clan
Literatures, Communities, and Learning: Conversations with Indigenous Writers by Aubrey Jean Hanson Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021 $29.99 / 9781771124508 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Indigenous literatures are relational. They are “moves” within existing relationships, calls to action, therapeutic texts, books that change the world simply by existing in a society that silences Indigenous…
Read more 1555 Affirming Indigenous learning
Front-Wave Boomers: Growing (Very) Old, Staying Connected, and Reimagining Aging by Gillian Ranson Vancouver: UBC Press (On Point Press), 2022 $22.95 / 9780774890502 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Did you know that the United Nations has declared 2021-2030 the Decade of Healthy Ageing and the World Health Organization has recently begun its “Global Campaign to…
Read more 1554 What boomers really need