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
Hollywood in the Klondike: Dawson City’s Great Film Find by Michael Gates Madeira Park, Harbour Publishing, 2022 $34.95 / 9781550179965 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * All that Flickered: The glitter of gold competed with the flicker of silent movies in 1890s Klondike You can almost taste the rotgut liquor and smell the sweat, cheap cigars…
Read more 1553 All that flickered
The Shuswap Country by Erskine Burnett, edited by Jim Cooperman and with a foreword by Mark Forsythe Salmon Arm: 55 Creative Group and Hucul Printing, 2022 $25.00 / 9780994990259 Reviewed by Sage Birchwater * The Shuswap Country is a history-buff’s delight waiting to pique your curiosity about life in the Shuswap during the 1930s and…
Read more 1552 Bard of the Shuswap
The Day the Pirates Went Mad by Trevor Atkins, illustrated by Jon Merchant Coquitlam: Silverpath Publishing, 2021 $14.95 / 9781989459027 Reviewed by Cassidy Lea All royalties are donated in support of BC Children’s Hospital * It’s the early 1700s and eleven-year-old Emma Sharpe is in a difficult situation. Her parents have been sent to prison…
Read more 1551 Emma and the pirate treasure
An Accidental Odyssey by kc dyer Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $22.00 / 9780593102060 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Though Homer’s Odyssey is a staple of the literary canon and serves as a foundation for countless interpretations and revisions, kc dyer’s An Accidental Odyssey rejects all the predictability of this territory. Instead, An…
Read more 1550 Epic quest, new narrative
The Resistance Dilemma: Place-Based Movements and the Climate Crisis by George Hoberg Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (The MIT Press), 2021 $54.00 / 9780262543088 Reviewed by Stephen Bocking * The climate crisis demands that we break our fossil fuel habit. This implies an energy revolution, rewiring society to rely on renewable electricity. New technologies can…
Read more 1549 Clarifying climate policy
Up the Coast: One family’s wild life in the forests of British Columbia by Kathryn Willcock Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781774390511 Reviewed by Dave Flawse * Kathryn Willcock’s rustic childhood summers spent in a remote British Columbia logging camp “with endless forests, a rugged coastline, and not much else,” provide the staple ingredients…
Read more 1548 Loggers, rhozzums, & grizzlies