The Shadow List by Jen Sookfong Lee Hamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn (Buckrider Books), 2021 $18.00 / 9781989496282 Reviewed by Michael Turner * A condition common to all the arts concerns how practitioners identify with their work. Consider visual artists who prefer to be introduced as landscape painters, or musicians who announce themselves as rock…
Read more 1037 Lee’s listopian reading
Our Backs Warmed By the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life by Vera Maloff Halfmoon Bay, Caitlin Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9781773860398 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Doukhobor Diaspora: A family oral history offers an antidote to past misunderstandings about the Russian sect When I was in my teens, a terrible explosion rocked my West…
Read more 1036 Kootenay Doukhobor family saga
MEMOIR: A country in transition: Russia, 1990-1995 by Max Wyman * But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them – from Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) I’d been in love with Russia, off and on, since…
Read more 1035 A country in transition: Russia, 1990-95
Doing Politics Differently? Women Premiers in Canada’s Provinces and Territories by Sylvia Bashevkin (editor) Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774860819 Reviewed by Barbara J. Messamore * Do women “do politics differently?” Not so much. That said, it is not at all clear that we need even ask the question “is it worth electing more…
Read more 1034 Women trailblazing in politics
Road Trips: Journeys in the Unspoiled World by Trevor Carolan Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020 $21.95 / 9781896949802 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * People writing about travel are like musicians playing a well-known piece. Both are interpreters, offering us their take on something that many have already seen or heard. Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata,…
Read more 1033 On the road with Trevor Carolan
Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene by Lilian Broca * Dear Mariam, Who would have imagined at the time we first met a few years ago that our newly formed relationship would be interrupted for several months due to a pandemic threatening the entire world? I certainly didn’t and I suspect nor…
Read more 1032 Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene
Burning Province by Michael Prior Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland and Stewart), 2020 $21.00 / 9780771072345 Reviewed by P.W. Bridgman * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that Burning Province, by Michael Prior, has been shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in the 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prizes….
Read more 1031 Where are my people?
Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia by Crawford Kilian, with a foreword by Adam Rudder Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 (3rd edition, first published 1978) $26.95 / 9781550179484 * “Where Are You From?” Growing Up African-Canadian in Vancouver by Gillian Laura Creese Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019 $34.95 /…
Read more 1030 Blacks in BC then and now
My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 2020 $17.99 / 9781534480704 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * My Summer of Love and Misfortune is an aptly titled comic YA novel with a propensity for food-centric similes, “super” as the omnipresent intensifier of choice, no shortage of hyphens, and featuring Iris…
Read more 1029 Redemption in Beijing
Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West & East: Christopher Tunnard, Sutemi Horiguchi by Marc Treib Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2020 $45.00 (US) / 9781943532780 Reviewed by Martin Segger * Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture is a tale of two architects — or rather of two prominent books: Christopher Tunnard’s Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1948)…
Read more 1028 Christopher Tunnard’s gardens
The Fraser: River of Life and Legend by Carol Blacklaws and Rick Blacklaws White Rock: Image West Productions, 2020 $39.95 / 9780994817518 Reviewed by Peter Grant * Of those who raft (and swim) the Mighty Fraser In this album, appealingly balanced between text and pictures, Rick Blacklaws’ photos capture the Fraser River’s fabulous landscapes, especially…
Read more 1027 Tribute to the Fraser River
The Fifth Beethoven by Melanie Jackson Vancouver: Crwth Press, 2020 $10.95 / 9781989724057 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Scottish-born Vancouverite Melanie Jackson is a veteran writer of mysteries for young people, and it shows: she hits the right notes with this mystery for tweens and early teens. Not only does the mystery thread keep you…
Read more 1026 A bevy of Beethovens
The Rise of Real-Life Superheroes, and the Fall of Everything Else by Peter Nowak Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2020 $24.95 / 9781771622509 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Superheroes in Our Midst: Are we ready for some public-minded vigilante crime fighters? The slogan “Defund the Police” became popular in 2020 as thousands of people protested…
Read more 1025 Superheroes in our midst
The Ride Home by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Victoria: Orca Books, 2020 $9.95 / 9781459821422 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that The Ride Home, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, has been shortlisted for the Sheila A. Egoff Prize in the 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Winners will…
Read more 1024 A city kid goes rural
Transatlantic Upper Canada: Portraits in Literature, Land, and British-Indigenous Relations by Kevin Hutchings Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020 $37.95 / 9780228001294 Reviewed by Graeme Wynn * Kevin Hutchings, the holder of a University Research Chair in the Department of English at the University of Northern British Columbia, begins this book with a very…
Read more 1023 On the Road to Damascus
Hearts Amok: A Memoir in Verse by Kevin Spenst Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2020 $18.00 / 9781772141498 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * One of the most basic requirements of any poet is that he or she is addicted to language. Other specialized knowledge and skills can come later, but a burning curiosity about words, their origins, and…
Read more 1022 A poet addicted to language
Stanley’s Dream: The Medical Expedition to Easter Island by Jacalyn Duffin Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $39.95 / 9780773557109 Reviewed by Colin Levings * Stanley’s Dream, Jacalyn Duffin’s book on the 1964-65 Medical Expedition to Easter Island (METEI) is an intriguing detailed compendium, retrospective analysis, and overall fascinating story of one of Canada’s…
Read more 1021 Canadian science on Easter Island
The Clean Body: A Modern History by Peter Ward Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 $37.95 / 9780773559387 Reviewed by John Douglas Belshaw * This review is late. Very late. It took McGill-Queen’s a staggeringly long time to get the book into my sanitized hands — due in part to pandemic understaffing at a…
Read more 1020 Dishing the dirt on soap
Two books reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb: The Girl Who Stole Everything: A Novel by Norman Ravvin Montreal: Linda Leith Éditions, 2019 $21.95 / 9781773900278 * Prisoners of Hope: Rising from the Ashes of the Holocaust: An Eyewitness Account of Life in the Auschwitz Extermination Camp and Two Slave Labour Camps (1944-1945) by George L. Pal…
Read more 1019 Prisoners of hope and memory
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel Toronto: HarperCollins, 2020 $34.99 / 9781443455725 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel was one of five books shortlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize. See here for an interview with her by Trevor Corkum on 49thShelf.com, and for an interview on the…
Read more 1018 Sweep us up, Emily