The Pit by Tara Borin Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $18.95 / 9780889713949 Reviewed by Michael Turner * Tara Borin’s first poetry collection The Pit takes its name from a Dawson City hotel, “the Yukon’s oldest and longest-running.” Christened the Westminster Hotel in 1898, its building (rooms, bars and a diner) has undergone numerous additions and…
Read more 1216 Despatches from the Pit
Gold in the Shadow: Twenty-Two Ghazals and a Cento for Phyllis Webb by Diana Hayes Salt Spring Island: Rainbow Publishers, 2021 $24.95 / 9780973440874 Gold in the Shadow is available here and here Reviewed by Isabella Wang * The poetry community flourishes on a synergism of influence, friendships, and what poet Stephen Collis calls “the…
Read more 1215 Couplets of inspired brushstrokes
The Last Goldfish: A True Tale of Friendship by Anita Lahey Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2020 $22.95 / 9781771963435 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * Part bildungsroman and part meta-memoir, Anita Lacey’s The Last Goldfish; A True Tale of Friendship is an account of a young girl watching a beloved friend struggle with and ultimately succumb to…
Read more 1214 Loving and losing Louisa
Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss by Betsy Warland, with a foreword by Susan Olding Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2021 (first published by Second Story Press, 2000) $22.95 / 9781771338370 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * In this time of global suffering and intolerable waiting, there is private room, a virtual closet, for introspection, undressing and redressing….
Read more 1213 Sex and death in God’s closet
Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement by Peter McFarlane with Doreen Manuel, with a foreword by Pamela Palmater Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 2020 (second edition; first published 1993) $32.95 / 9781771135108 Reviewed by Sarah Nickel * Indigenous women “were every part of organizing [because] the women are…
Read more 1212 Reconsidering George Manuel
Sunday Drive to Gun Club Road by Marion Quednau Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $21.95 / 9780889713987 Reviewed by Kathy Mezei * The short story is a quirky form; it has certain novelistic features—characters, narrators, setting, plots (necessarily curtailed) and certain poetic features—brevity, emotional shock or surprise, intensity of language, but it marches staunchly to the…
Read more 1211 Resisting the conventions
Lost Souls of Lakewood: The History and Mystery of Blaylock’s Mansion by Charlie Hodge with Dan McGauley Victoria: FriesenPress, 2021 $18.99 / 9781039100428 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * The Ghosts of Blaylock’s Mansion: A Romp Through the History of a BC architectural marvel is fun but lacks historical verification Mom used to drive us out…
Read more 1210 The ghosts of Blaylock’s mansion
Three novellas reviewed by Miranda Marini: Winter Wren by Theresa Kishkan Madeira Park & Amsterdam: Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2016 $18.00 / 9780978005450 * Tower by Frances Boyle Madeira Park & Amsterdam: Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2018 $20.00 / 9780978005467 * Wanda by Barbara Lambert Madeira Park & Amsterdam: Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2021 $20.00 / 9780978005474 Reviewed…
Read more 1209 Novellas of the coast and interior
Postsecondary Education in British Columbia: Public Policy and Structural Development, 1960-2015 by Robert Cowin Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774838344 Reviewed by Ken Coates * Post-secondary education is a controversial topic in British Columbia. From failed attempts to revive Notre Dame University in Nelson to the decision to open the University of Northern British…
Read more 1208 A multitude of universities
Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures by Ivan Coyote Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2021 $25.00 / 9780771051722 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * One day in March, 2020, Ivan Coyote received an email telling them that the next day’s roadshows had been cancelled. A few days later, they learned that most of their…
Read more 1207 Coyote’s Covid correspondence
INTERVIEW: Dustin Cole with The British Columbia Review. We caught up with Dustin Cole at his brother’s house in Slave Lake, Alberta, to learn the circumstances and inspiration for Notice (Nightwood Editions, 2020), the story of Dylan Levett, a dishwasher from Alberta caught in the gears of renoviction from his apartment on Main Street. “It’s summer 2017…
Read more 1206 Interview with Dustin Cole
The Octopus Has Three Hearts by Rachel Rose Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $22.95 / 9781771622882 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * Rachel Rose’s first collection of short stories, The Octopus Has Three Hearts, is as terrific as readers of her poetry would expect. The 14 stories feature various characters in different kinds of crises,…
Read more 1205 Needy people & creature comforts
Music from a Strange Planet by Barbara Black Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781773860589 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Barbara Black’s website informs us that Music from a Strange Planet, her debut short story collection, “began as a series of flash fictions exploring the intersection of human and insect existence” and “metamorphosed” into…
Read more 1204 Thresholds and transformations
Wild Bird by Leanne Baugh Markham, ON: Red Deer Press, 2021 $14.95 / 9780889956360 Reviewed by Valerie Green * A very vivid opening scene in Leanne Baugh’s book Wild Bird might well seem a little too graphic for young adult readers. Nonetheless, it is a necessary opening to a story about the hardships faced by…
Read more 1203 Kate Harding steps up
Graeme Wynn reviews four books: The Imperilled Ocean: Human Stories From a Changing Sea by Laura Trethewey Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2020 $22.95 / 9781773101156 * Passion and Persistence: Fifty Years of the Sierra Club in British Columbia by Diane Pinch Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $12.99 / 9781550178814 * Hope Matters: Why Changing the…
Read more 1202 Hothouse Earth: The future is now
Could Be by George Bowering Vancouver: New Star Books, 2021 $18.00 / 9781554201785 Reviewed by Karl Siegler * George Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate and author of over 100 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, could be dead. In April of 2015, standing in front of the Point Grey Library in Vancouver, B.C., his heart…
Read more 1201 Must be Bowering
INTERVIEW: Marion Quednau with The Ormsby Review Marion Quednau has won numerous awards for both her fiction and her poetry, including a National Magazine Award, and the People’s Choice Award when shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Her fiction has received critical acclaim, the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, when the late Mordecai Richler…
Read more 1200 Interview with Marion Quednau
Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon by Alexandra Morton Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Vintage Canada), 2021 $35.00 / 9780735279667 Reviewed by Stephen Bocking * In the late 1980s Alexandra Morton encountered the first signs that salmon farms, newcomers to the Broughton Archipelago, were…
Read more 1199 Settler viruses & wild salmon
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline Toronto: Penguin Random House (Vintage Canada), 2019 $21.00 / 9780735277205 Reviewed by David Milward * Cherie Dimaline, a member of the Georgian Bay Metis community in Ontario, has emerged as a leading writer of Indigenous fiction. One of her novels, The Marrow Thieves, has won multiple awards including the…
Read more 1198 Land, colonialism, & temptation
Wanda by Barbara Lambert Madeira Park & Amsterdam: Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2021 $20.00 / 9780978005474 Reviewed by David Stouck * Most of the fiction written by Barbara Lambert has been set outside of Canada. Her prize-winning stories, collected as A Message for Mr. Lazarus (2000), take place largely in Costa Rica, her full-length novel,…
Read more 1197 The orchardist’s daughter