The Porcelain Moon: A Novel of France, the Great War, and Forbidden Love by Janie Chang Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (William Morrow), 2023 $24.99 / 9780063072862 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * While historical romance is not my preferred genre, I was immediately gripped by Janie Chang’s fourth novel, The Porcelain Moon, not so much for the…
Read more 1747 A lovely sense of place & time
This Unlikely Soil by Andrea Routley Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781773860985 Reviewed by Amy Reiswig * Anyone who has spent time in a BC forest knows it can be hard to navigate. Spaces between tall trunks are filled with thick tangles of salal, huckleberry, and ferns, and the way forward is strewn…
Read more 1746 Much grows in shadow
Built on a Dream An audio piece by Anne Watson * Introduction. Built on a Dream includes the voices of a narrator, a storyteller, and a historian. Positionality and self-conscious awareness matter in this experimental piece. I’ve written it different ways over the years: this is my first attempt using multiple voices. Pierre Bourdieu’s “Biographical…
Read more 1745 Built on a Dream
Forgotten Cranbrook: A Photo History of Early Cranbrook & District by Keith G. Powell, Derryll White, and Erin Knutson Cranbrook: Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History, 2022 $29.95 / 9780981214696 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Pioneer impermanence: A photographic history tour of the East Kootenays I am staring into the faces of several older men…
Read more 1744 Pioneer impermanence
Mother Tongue Publishing Limited: Trade Books and Limited Editions 1995-2021 Salt Spring Island, 2022 Available here for $10.00 including postage A special report by Phyllis Parham Reeve * Mona Fertig has retired. How can that be? For more than 40 years Mona has been a force of nature in BC’s literary community. First, there was…
Read more 1743 Mother Tongue bites its tongue
Knowledge Within: Treasures of the Northwest Coast by Pam Brown, Jisgang Nika Collison, Anthony Alan Shelton, and Jodi Simkin (curators). Edited by Caitlin Gordon-Walker Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2022, in collaboration with the UBC Museum of Anthropology $60.00 / 9781773270999 Reviewed by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa * A good book should leave something behind in your mind,…
Read more 1742 Knowing the Northwest Coast
Susan/Elizabeth — a love poem by Kitty Blandy * I smell you before you arrive Leather and grass and skin Where have you been today? Friend, companion, confidante. I’m following. We joined at the beginning Before the beginning – Or maybe it was just at the end. You took me from singular to plural.[1] From…
Read more 1741 Susan/Elizabeth: a love poem
Song of the Sparrow: A Memoir by Tara MacLean Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (HarperAvenue), 2023 $25.99 / 9781443465120 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * Memoirs by artistic creators are rarely not rife with a range of forms of suffering. That art can offer transcendence is one of its core values, and in the life of PEI songwriter,…
Read more 1740 The song must persist
On editorial illustration by Mariken Van Nimwegen * “You were an editorial illustrator? So you did the cartoons in the newspaper?” Well no, I say. Cartooning is a genre of drawing that’s usually part of the editorial pages where it satirizes a current news item, either local or international, and tends to be positioned close…
Read more 1739 The art of editorial illustration
Why Humans Build Up: The Rise of Towers, Temples and Skyscrapers by Gregor Craigie, illustrated by Kathleen Fu Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2022 $29.95 / 9781459821880 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Was the Tower of Jericho built as a defensive watchtower or a mechanism to help farmers calculate the summer solstice? What are the advantages…
Read more 1737 The sky’s the limit
Weird Rules to Follow by Kim Spencer Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2022 $12.95 / 9781459835580 Reviewed by Cassidy Jean * Growing up is tough. Crushes, hormones, and the expectations that come with going from child to “preteen” are difficult to navigate. Add to that racial tensions, and growing up as an Indigenous girl in the…
Read more 1736 Weird rules we all follow
Long Time Dead: My Investigation into the Unsolved Murder of Ralph Wilson Snair by Susan McIver Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $14.99 / 9781039151123 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The great advantage a fictional murder mystery has over a true crime saga is that in fiction the detective always gets his man. Oh, okay, there was that…
Read more 1735 The matter of Snair & Weasner
Dance Me to the End: Ten Months and Ten Days with ALS by Alison Acheson Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2019 (also available as an audiobook) $22.99 / 9781927366868 Reviewed by Lee Reid * “What will become of me? Who will take care of me? Will you stay with me to the end?” People ask these questions…
Read more 1734 Moving to the end
Alone in the Great Unknown: One Woman’s Remarkable Adventures in the Northwestern Wilderness by Caroll Simpson Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2022 $26.95 / 9781550179941 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * As I load birch logs a local woodsman has chopped into my wood pit bin, groaning slightly at the work in only minus three conditions, I…
Read more 1733 Maintenance and sustenance
The Secret of Bell Island by Mike Phelan Victoria: FriesenPress, 2021 $28.99 / 9781039127296 Reviewed by Valerie Green * This author has written a very thought-provoking story set on Bell Island in Newfoundland during two time periods – the Second World War and the present-day — which also makes for an intriguing narrative of a…
Read more 1732 Bell Island intrigue
Don’t Tell: Family Secrets by Donna McCart Sharkey and Arleen Paré, editors Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2023 $44.95 / 9781772584240 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Sisters Donna McCart Sharkey and Arleen Paré have gathered contributions of essays and poetry from sixty-one writers for Don’t Tell: Family Secrets. McCart Sharkey who grew up in Montreal…
Read more 1731 Secrets spared and shared
See You Later Maybe Never by Lenore Rowntree Surrey: Now or Never Publishing, 2022 $19.95 / 9781989689400 Reviewed by Amy Whitmore * What does a tough, creative woman do when she retires to join her husband (and to avoid accepting her new “ageist” position in the fashion industry) in his retirement? Turn into a lust-struck…
Read more 1730 The Vanessa papers
The Growing Season by Nelson Boschman, with a foreword by Lois Cho Vancouver: Nelson Boschman, 2022 $23.99 / 9781778083105 Reviewed by Dennis Wilkinson * Nelson Boschman displays an orgasmic-like giddiness towards wine. He is the eight-year-old at Christmas time, and wine is the biggest present under the tree with his name on it. This book…
Read more 1729 Wine and spirits
Ariadne Then and Now: The Labyrinth and the End of Times (third edition) by Carol Matthews Seattle and elsewhere: NeoPoiesis Press, 2022 $21.95 ($16.95 (U.S.) / 9798985833607 Reviewed by Lenore Rowntree * A modern labyrinth in the classical Cretan-style with the addition of Chartres-style double-ax shapes at the turning points. A stone construction labyrinth surrounded…
Read more 1728 Out of the labyrinth
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), 2022 $24.95 / 9780771047244 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * Over the past six decades, as the People’s Republic of China has turned its brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet into the permanent subjugation of an entire…
Read more 1727 Blood, soil, and memory