The Beguiling by Zsuzsi Gartner Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Hamish Hamilton), 2020 $29.95 / 9780735239357 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * Motherhood is difficult and often unrewarding. Before I am besieged with outrage at how motherhood offers a profound experience unlike any other, please reread that sentence: I said often, not always. A statement need…
Read more 1079 Motherhood and talking plants
Surreal Surrebutter Rebutter Sandwich Spread by Ernest Hekkanen * Editor’s note: The archives of the New Orphic Review (NOR) are a popular part of The Ormsby Review website. Since 2018 all the back issues of NOR have been housed under our roof. Founded in 1998 by Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner, NOR was a semi-annual…
Read more 1078 Hekkanen’s Kootenay Surrealism
The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing’s Forbidden Underground by Patrick Saint-Paul, translated by David Homel Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781551528038 Reviewed by May Q Wong * In The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing’s Forbidden Underground, veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Saint-Paul exposes how Beijing’s, and indeed China’s, explosive growth has been…
Read more 1077 Life beneath the streets
Watermelon Snow: Science, Art, and a Lone Polar Bear by Lynne Quarmby Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9780228003595 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Books about climate change are prolific—and for all the alarming reasons that most of us accept. Watermelon Snow, by Lynne Quarmby, is essentially a book about climate change,…
Read more 1076 Reflections on an Arctic voyage
Best Canadian Poetry, 2019 by Rob Taylor (editor) Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2019 $22.95 / 9781771963305 Reviewed by P.W. Bridgman * The book under review being an anthology (and a “Best of…” one at that), kindly permit this reviewer a brief prolegomenon on the subject of assembling anthologies—an often-fraught enterprise. To the properly humble among us,…
Read more 1075 Canadian poems, carefully chosen
Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve by Elizabeth May Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 (second edition; first published by McClelland & Stewart, 1990) $25.00 / 9781771604581 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Anyone who has visited Haida Gwaii will instantly relate to Elizabeth May’s remembrance of one of the most significant…
Read more 1074 Elizabeth May & Gwaii Haanas
Unravelling by Josephine Boxwell Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2020 $20.00 / 9781771835442 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * As Vivian, the elder of two protagonists in Unravelling, says, “Small towns shrink to the size of fishbowls when it comes to gossip” (p. 53). Perhaps the fishbowl metaphor partly explains why, although the past several decades have seen…
Read more 1073 Gossip, sagebrush, & injustice
A Whisper Across Time: My Family’s Story of the Holocaust told through Art & Poetry by Olga Campbell Vancouver: Jubaji Press, 2018, distributed by Red Toque Books. To purchase see here $31.95 / 9780981291123 Reviewed by Claire Sicherman * I first met visual artist and author Olga Campbell in 2019 at Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre,…
Read more 1072 Healing through creativity
ESSAY: Remnants of Sumas Mountain by Natalie Lang For those who came before and those not yet arrived. * And forever before me gleams, The shining city of song, In the beautiful land of dreams. But when I would enter the gate Of that golden atmosphere, It is gone, and I wonder and wait For…
Read more 1071 Remnants of Sumas Mountain
The Jigsaw Puzzle King Toronto: Dundurn, 2020 $12.95 / 9781459746060 by Gina McMurchy-Barber Reviewed by Valerie Green * The Jigsaw Puzzle King by Gina McMurchy-Barber is a beautiful little book with a compelling message of hope for young adult readers. Eleven year-old Warren thinks he has two major problems in his life. The first is…
Read more 1070 Standing up for Bennie
ESSAY: Sacred Cows by Sheila O’Donoghue * At The Ormsby Review we are pleased to host Letters from the Pandemic: A 30th Anniversary Commemorative Public Writing Project of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program of Simon Fraser University. Since December 2020, we have uploaded 27 letters and essays described by program director Sasha Colby as “moving…
Read more Letters from the Pandemic 27: Sacred Cows
On Their Own Terms: True Stories of Trailblazing Women of Vancouver Island by Haley Healey Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 $9.95 / 9781772033250 Reviewed by Lynne Bowen * Vancouver Island attracts a certain type of person: a person who has chosen to live separate from convention, or from family, or from boredom, or from the past…
Read more 1069 Island women in the spotlight
Deadman’s Castle by Iain Lawrence Toronto: Penguin Random House (Margaret Ferguson Books), 2021 $17.99 / 9780823446551 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * “My memories were like the tombstones in the cemetery, chipped and broken, so jumbled around that they didn’t make sense. Maybe I was trying to connect things that couldn’t be connected.” By the time…
Read more 1068 The hazards of home school
ESSAY: Anne Carson: Ambiguity, Uncertainty, Ecstasy by Bob Foulkes * On an otherwise ordinary day in 1965, a precocious, eccentric fifteen year-old discovered a book in the sales bin of a Coles bookstore, a serious tome by Willis Barnstone on Sappho the famous ancient Greek poet. The book was bilingual — ancient Greek and English,…
Read more 1067 The uncertainty of Anne Carson
MEMOIR: The Sonics at The Grooveyard: My Loud Baptism of Fire by Grahame Ware * On reviewing Aaron Chapman’s Vancouver After Dark (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), I was flooded with memories of my youth and the venues where I first learned the power and pull of nightclubs. My realization of this, my baptism of fire moment,…
Read more 1066 The Sonics at the Grooveyard
How To Lose Everything: A Memoir by Christa Couture Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2020 $26.95 / 9781771622622 Reviewed by David Milward * Not making quite as much on a stock investment as you’d like; a rising interest rate puts a dent into your revenue; a repair becomes necessary with respect to your million-dollar home;…
Read more 1065 Don’t take it all for granted
INTERVIEW: Luke Inglis with Nathaniel G. Moore * Born in Malawi, Luke Inglis spent his childhood skipping between British Columbia and Africa. When not lost in the deep woods, he can be found at his day job as a professional book slinger. He lives on the Sunshine Coast in BC with his dog Floyd. Something Drastic…
Read more 1064 Sunshine Coast exchange
Saturday at the Garage by Nancy Hundal (text) and Angela Pan (illustrations) Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781988242323 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * The Saturday morning sun rises to greet a father and daughter on the way to the garage. While there’s no school to attend, there are chores that must be done: floors…
Read more 1063 Garage magic and memory
Falling into Flight: A Memoir of Life and Dance by Kaija Pepper Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2020 $19.95 / 9781773240831 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * In the early 1930s two dancers from British Columbia were invited to join the corps de ballet of Basil’s famous Ballets Russes. The offer came with one condition: Patricia Meyers from…
Read more 1062 Pepper’s ballet and dance
Lost Time by Winona Kent St Ives, UK: Blue Devil Books, 2020 $19.99 / 9781777329419 Reviewed by Miranda Marini * Mistaken identity, car chases, and thunderstorms run rampant in this thrilling continuation in the Jason Davey mysteries. As the third instalment in this collection, Winona Kent’s Lost Time follows Jason Davey, an amateur investigator by…
Read more 1061 Mystery & folk music nostalgia