The Swap by Robyn Harding Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2020 $24.99 / 9781982144760 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * The Swap by Robyn Harding is that cocktail you’re embarrassed to order, decide to order after going around and saying “Fuck it, I deserve to have some fun; there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure in…
Read more 1057 A salacious romp
Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada by Jonathan Manthorpe Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2019 $24.95 / 9781770865396 Reviewed by Trevor Carolan * Book-length critiques of our national failures of nerve and vision seldom make easy reading. Drug use policies, Quebec-ROC relations, Indigenous reconciliation, housing and environmental issues — on and…
Read more 1056 Beijing in Canada
Umingmak: Stuart Hodgson and the Birth of the Modern Arctic by Jake Ootes New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2020 $29.95 / 9781777010102 Reviewed by Dylan Burrows * “Going North” is an expression laden with expectation. Uninvited guests, Canadians trespass upon occupied Indigenous lands; they enact their desires on territory they imagine as uninhabited. In Umingmak: Stuart…
Read more 1055 Hodgson of the Arctic
Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility by Myriam Steinberg, illustrations by Christache Vancouver: Page Two Books, 2021 $23.95 / 9781989603642 Reviewed by Margot Fedoruk * Warning: you’re going to need to set aside some uninterrupted time to savour Myriam Steinberg’s new graphic novel, Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility because it is hard to put…
Read more 1054 Foiling the fertility clock
Paul & Pierre: Dragon! by Caroline Adderson, with illustrations by Alice Carter Toronto: Owlkids Books, 2021 $18.95 / 9781771473286 * Pierre & Paul: Avalanche! by Caroline Adderson, illustrations by Alice Carter Toronto: Owlkids Books, 2020 $18.95 / 9781771473279 * It Happened on Sweet Street by Caroline Adderson, illustrations by Stéphane Jorisch Toronto: Penguin Random House…
Read more 1053 An Adderson quartet
INTERVIEW: Terence Young with Nathaniel G. Moore * Terence Young lives in Victoria, where he has recently retired from teaching English and creative writing at St. Michaels University School. He is a co-founder of The Claremont Review (1992), an international literary journal for young writers that has, after 25 years of service to the writing community,…
Read more 1052 Covid & the Zoom engine of poetry
Fool’s Gold: The Life and Legacy of Vancouver’s Official Town Fool by Jesse Donaldson Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2020 $18.00 / 9781772141467 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * In the spring of 1967, if you went to the courthouse in downtown Vancouver between 2 and 3 p.m., you might have encountered a strange sight: a thirty-something man…
Read more 1051 The enigmatic Joachim Foikis
Crocs in a Box: Three Little Books by Robert Heidbreder, illustrated by Rae Maté Vancouver: Tradewind Books, 2020 $24.95 / 9781926890067 Consisting of Crocodiles Say (2006), Crocodiles Play (2008), and Crocs at Work (2015) Reviewed by Irene N. Watts * Well-loved books sometimes languish on the backlist, or go out of print. Happily Tradewind Books…
Read more 1050 Return of the crocodiles
Toshiko by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 (new and revised edition; first published 2015) $19.95 / 9780988110175 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A graphic novel about the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians? Well, why not? After all, my earliest reading about the Japanese was in comic strips and the weekend newspapers. Terry and the…
Read more 1049 A wartime internment romance
Don’t Stand So Close to Me by Eric Walters Victoria: Orca Books, 2020 $10.95 / 9781459827875 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Eric Walters book Don’t Stand So Close to Me is very pertinent in today’s world and will help children better understand the new realty of a world-wide COVID-19 pandemic. The children in this story…
Read more 1048 Covid in the classroom
A Paramedic’s Tales: Hilarious, Horrible and Heartwarming True Stories by Graeme Taylor Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $24.95 / 9781550179026 Reviewed by May Q Wong * I can almost hear him say “Have I told you about the time…?” These are the kind of adventure stories one might hear around a campfire, a family dinner…
Read more 1047 Vignettes from the front line
Taken by the Muse: On the Path to Becoming a Filmmaker by Anne Wheeler Edmonton: Newest Press, 2020 $20.95 / 9781774390016 Reviewed by Lynne Bowen * A train has stopped on a prairie siding. A passenger watches through the window as several children play shinny on a frozen water-filled ditch beside the tracks. It is…
Read more 1046 Featuring Anne Wheeler
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction by Joshua Whitehead (editor) Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781551528113 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Joshua Whitehead’s new edited anthology, Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, comes on the heels of anthologies like Walking the…
Read more 1045 An Indigenous sci-fi moment
Big Promises, Small Government: Doing Less with Less in the BC Liberal New Era by George M. Abbott Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $32.95 / 9780774864879 Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * Would Gordon Campbell like this book? He can answer for himself, but his response might well be, “Yes” and “No.” “Yes,” because as a…
Read more 1044 Campbell’s shortsighted edicts
The Plant-based Foodie Vancouver by Brad Hill and Chris Dagenais; foreword by Erin Ireland and Anna Pippus Vancouver: Brad Hill Imaging Ltd., 2018. Available here, here, and here $28.95 / 9780994919540 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * There are two kinds of recipes: aspirational and accessible; they are not mutually exclusive, although they can be. The…
Read more 1043 In the mood for purple
My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques by Mary Fox Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $44.95 / 97815501179385 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * Part I of Mary Fox’s lavishly illustrated My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques charts the artist’s career beginning with the hand-built figurative sculptures she fashioned out of found clay…
Read more 1042 A culture of coastal pottery
A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada by Cole Harris Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $39.95 / 9780774864411 Reviewed by Barry Gough * Canada is usually described as an unbounded land, limited only by political borders with foreign states and physically by its seas and coasts. Here the distinguished historical geographer, Cole Harris, retired…
Read more 1041 A country of bounded spaces
ORMSBY REVIEW PRESS: Frederick Paget Norbury, Chapter One: The Historical Background: The East Kootenay in the late Nineteenth Century by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: we are pleased to present Chapter 1 of Brenda Callaghan’s hitherto unpublished biography, Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada, the introduction…
Read more 1040 East Kootenay off-grid, old-style
People Among the People: The Public Art of Susan Point by Robert D. Watt Vancouver: Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing in collaboration with UBC Museum of Anthropology, 2019 $50.00 / 9781773270425 * Susan Point: Spindle Whorl by Grant Arnold and Ian Thom (editors), with a foreword by Kathleen Bartels Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery and London: Black Dog Press,…
Read more 1039 Outward from Musqueam
All Fracked Up! The costs of LNG to British Columbia by Alice de Wolff and Delores Broten (editors) Comox: Watershed Sentinel Books, 2020 $30.00 / 9780995328655 Reviewed by John Gellard * “What are you reading?” asked a highly educated neighbour. “A book about fracking,” “What’s fracking?” “How do you heat your house?” “With natural gas.”…
Read more 1038 Welcome to the sacrifice zone