Bog Treasure by Eileen Casey and Jeanne Cannizzo Dublin: Arlen House, 2022, distributed by Syracuse University Press $19.95 / 9781851322695 Reviewed by Jane Frankish * Editor’s note: readers might also like to hear Eileen Casey read a selection of her bog poems in Treasure, a short film commissioned by Offaly Arts for Culture Night, 2021,…
Read more 1493 Holding fast
Framed in Fire: A Lane Winslow Mystery by Iona Whishaw Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2022 $16.95 / 9781771513807 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * The past is still, for us, a place that is not yet safely settled. — Michael Ondaatje, from The Faber Book of Contemporary Canadian Short Stories (1990) In the nine Lane Winslow mysteries…
Read more 1492 Postwar Kootenay intrigue
The Caregiver’s Companion by Patricia Jean Smith Oakville, ON: Rock’s Mills Press, 2022 $25.00 / 9781772442441 Reviewed by Betty Jane Hegerat * The cover of The Caregiver’s Companion by Patricia Smith is graced with an image by Chinese print maker, Hao Boyi, of two Manchurian red-crowned cranes. These birds are rare and endangered. To imagine…
Read more 1491 Be brave in giving
Gather: A Dirty Apron Cookbook by David Robertson Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019 $38.99 / 9781773270678 Reviewed by Gillian Crowther * As the Covid-19 pandemic anxiety recedes we can now look forward to friends and family coming together to cook, eat and renew our bonds with one another. Food is the stuff of our sociability,…
Read more 1490 Robertson’s global cuisine
Help! I’m Alive by Gurjinder Basran Toronto: ECW Press, 2022 $22.95 / 9781770416307 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * On the very surface, Help! I’m Alive isn’t a novel about paucity. After all, there’s the thrum of an urban population busy with careers, errands, appointments, and hobbies. Smooth governance and well-funded infrastructure assure the maintenance…
Read more 1489 Jacob McAlister’s suicide
Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene by Jaspreet Singh Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2022 $22.00 / 9781927366974 Reviewed by Danial Neil * A novel of the Anthropocene, a word with great weight, perhaps not easily used in a sentence or casual conversation. Still, it demands you to look, to understand, to fully come to terms with…
Read more 1488 A story of consequence
Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home by Isa Milman Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $24.95 / 9781772033830 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * What do we expect of a memoir? Henry James famously referred to the novel as “a great baggy monster,” but the memoir, unconstrained by the exigencies of plot and character development, can…
Read more 1487 The uncomfortable in-between
Canadian Pacific Trackside 1977 to 2012 with Conductor John Cowan by John Cowan Avon-By-The-Sea, New Jersey: Morning Sun Books, 2022 $69.95 (US) / 9781582487854 This book is available from Kelly’s Kaboose, The Railway Store, in Savona, and Central Hobbies in Vancouver — or order a copy from your local independent bookstore or directly from the…
Read more 1486 Canadian Pacific calling
Just One Look by Lindsay Cameron Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Ballantine Books), 2022 $23.00 / 9780593159071 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * As the first pages of Lindsay Cameron’s Just One Look unfold, it becomes clear that Cassie Woodson is not to be trusted. The ease with which Cassie learns every intimate detail about a…
Read more 1485 A perilous email rabbit hole
Edward Feuz Jr.: A Story of Enchantment by D.L. Stephen Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2021 $28.00 / 9781771605090 Reviewed by Ron Dart * Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. — John Muir (quoted in Edward Feuz Jr., p. 277) The Canadian mountaineering tradition has its layered origins in the role of the CPR…
Read more 1484 Edward Feuz, alpine legend
Head to Head by Jennifer Manuel Toronto: James Lorimer, 2020 $12.95 / 9781459414280 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In this young adult book for 10 to 13 year-olds, Jennifer Manuel has written a story which will inspire all young girls who love sports. But the book also carries a strong message of how team work…
Read more 1483 A west coast soccer story
For Freedom We Will Fight: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia, 1905-1990 by Larry Gambone Edmonton: Black Cat Press, 2021 $16.00 / 9781926878263 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * B.C.’s Wobblies: A radical union that will not die The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known everywhere as the Wobblies, were once the…
Read more 1482 The black cat lives on
ESSAY: Swiss Edelweiss Village: to be or not to be? by Ron Dart * Swiss guides were front and centre in the origins and development of mountaineering and mountain culture in Western Canada. The fact that much of their work was divided between Lake Louise and Rogers Pass meant that Golden, BC, became their place…
Read more 1481 Save Swiss Edelweiss Village
Inspiring Canadians: Forty Brilliant Canadians and their Visions for the Nation by Mark Bulgutch, with a foreword by Peter Mansbridge Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2022 $24.95 / 9781771623148 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * If Inspiring Canadians’ title doesn’t already mark this book as upbeat, both Mansbridge’s preface, centred on a touching anecdote from his…
Read more 1480 Forty visions of Canada
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel Toronto: Harper Collins Canada, 2022 $29.99 / 9781443466097 Reviewed by W.H. New * In the first paragraphs of Part 1 of Sea of Tranquility, dated 1912, a young man named Edwin St. John St. Andrew stands ‘with gloved hands’ on the upper deck of a mid-Atlantic steamship,…
Read more 1479 Play time
A Killing at Easter Hill: A Season of Fragments by Alex Rose Vancouver: Walhachin Press, 2021 $16.00 / 9781777582319 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski A Killing at Easter Hill is available for sale at People’s Co-Op Bookstore on Commercial Drive, Vancouver * One of the advantages of a novel over a book of poems and other…
Read more 1478 Coastal flux and depth
From Nazneen to Naina: 20 years of Kareena Kapoor Khan in Bollywood by Gurpreet Singh Ludhiana, India: Chetna Parkashan, 2021 $14.99 (US) / 9789391530433 Reviewed by Harpreet Singh Sekha * A unique book on Bollywood Diva that showcases what India is going through under a right wing regime BC-based author and journalist Gurpreet Singh has…
Read more 1477 A book was the least I could do
The Famous Five: Canada’s Crusaders for Women’s Rights by Barbara Smith Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $9.95 / 9781772032338 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In this very important book, Barbara Smith tells the in-depth stories of five women — Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Henrietta Muir Edwards — who collectively changed history…
Read more 1476 The driving force
Speaking in Tongues: Selected Poems by H.C. (Hans) ten Berge, translated by Pleuke Boyce with an Afterword by Breyten Breytenbach Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771714167 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * Preconceptions are comforting: most Anglophone readers probably still think of the Netherlands’ cultural contribution solely in terms of the visual arts and maybe…
Read more 1475 Translating from the Dutch
The Quiet in Me by Patrick Lane, edited by Lorna Crozier Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2021 $18.95 / 9781550179811 Reviewed by gillian harding-russell * In The Quiet In Me, Patrick Lane writes from the perspective of old age with its inward vision of the paradoxes inherent in first and last events: of death in birth…
Read more 1474 Kinds of birth