LETTER: Ms. Mary Wollstonecraft c/o The Disputatious Hereafter by Reema Faris * My dearest Mary, It’s been over five years since our encounter at Gunnebo House on the outskirts of Göteborg. Pushing the door ajar for me was such a kind gesture on your part. Luc, 14 at the time and with all the certainty…
Read more #998 Letters from the Pandemic 10: My dearest Mary
Render by Sachiko Murakami Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $18.95 / 9781551528274 Reviewed by Michael Turner * In his celebrated Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Croom Helm, 1976), Raymond Williams presents a selection of English words used in “general conversation” to demonstrate not their misuse by a general public, but how their…
Read more #997 Word Perfect
You Are Eating An Orange. You Are Naked by Sheung-King (Aaron Tang) Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2020 $20.00 / 9781771666411 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * It’s not everyday that a novel inspires me to drink a certain brand of beer, but I’ve been drinking Tsingtao regularly since I first read this debut novel from Sheung-King. Despite…
Read more #996 Straight white guys and Tsingtao
The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2020 $22.95 / 9781771622608 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * Katherine Fawcett’s second collection of stories is a must read for anyone who likes deliriously imaginative, hilarious, and twisted fairy/fantasy stories that skewer contemporary culture. This was a book I often had to put down…
Read more #995 Fairy tales for modern minds
LETTER: Dear Readers of History, and all that Jazz by Mariken van Nimwegen * What does the Oxford historian Peter Frankopan’s hefty 2015 book The Silk Roads have in common with “Vancouver man about town,” Andreas Nothiger’s skinny 1984 synchronoptical World History Chart? I think I have a case, and a story. Frankopan gives us…
Read more #994 Letters from the Pandemic 8: Dear readers of history
Letters from the Pandemic 7: Dear Roger and David by Max Wyman * This letter to his childhood friends in England by Max Wyman is one of a series of Letters from the Pandemic published in the Graduate Liberal Studies Journal, hosted by The Ormsby Review. The entire series of letters can be seen here….
Read more #993 Letters from the Pandemic 7: Dear Roger and David
The End of Me: Stories by John Gould Calgary: Freehand Books, 2020 $22.95 / 9781988298566 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Every once in a while a book comes along that’s so different, it’s hard to find a tack to take in reviewing it. John Gould’s most recent collection of short fictions presents just such a…
Read more #992 Plums, psilocybin, faceplant
Our Trip Around the World by Renate Belczyk Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $22.00 / 9781771603775 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Travel books have been with us for centuries. Homer’s saga of Odysseus’s ten years’ foray around the Aegean amongst monsters and temptresses set a high bar for adventure. It was in the age of…
Read more #991 Balkans, bicycles, baksheesh
Grandfathered: Dispatches from the Trenches of Modern Grandparenthood by Ian Haysom Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2020 $22.95 / 9781772033335 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * All grandfathers are created equal: They all share the pleasure of a tiny hand slipping into their own. I skipped the grandfather stage of life and went straight to great grandfathering,…
Read more #990 All grandfathers are created equal
Great Expectations: Reflections on Museums and Canada by Jack Lohman Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 $14.95 / 9780772673039 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * “Isn’t it amazing that in 2019, Canadians are so passionate about the past?” In this era seen by some as haunted by a toxic past which must be erased as…
Read more #989 Passionate about the past
Once Upon an Island: Hope and Hardship, Building a Log House and a Life on the North Coast of British Columbia by Suellen Guenther Victoria: Vargas Publishing, 2020 $29.95 / 9781771368421 Reviewed by Kate Braid * Once Upon An Island is the story of a young woman, Suellen Guenther, who in 1970 after a stint…
Read more #988 Making lives at Oona River
The Pocket Guide to The Unheralded Artists of BC Series; the Life and Art of Jack Akroyd, George Fertig, Mary Filer, Jack Hardman, Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, LeRoy Jenson, David Marshall, Frank Molnar, Arthur Pitts, Mildred Valley Thornton, Ina D.D. Uhthoff, Harry Webb, Jessie Webb by Mona Fertig (editor), with an introduction by Marsha Lederman Salt Spring…
Read more #986 Unsung artists find their voice
Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History by Eve Lazarus Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $32.95 / 9781551528298 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * As a lifelong Vancouverite, arguably the Canadian equivalent of a native New Yorker, I’m habituated to the abundant charms of Vancouver, which doubtless prevents me from noticing a veritable panoply of…
Read more #985 Open scenery, hidden history
How a Woman Becomes a Lake by Marjorie Celona Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada, 2020 (Hamish Hamilton) $19.95 / 9780735235847 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * Marjorie Celona’s second novel, How a Woman Becomes a Lake, is similar in style to her first, Y, and that alone makes it worth reading. Celona is skilled at psychological…
Read more #984 Paper boats and rising secrets
One Madder Woman by Dede Crane Calgary: Freehand Books, 2020 $23.95 / 9781988298689 Reviewed by Carole Gerson * France’s Impressionist artists are now so canonical that we often forget that their first exhibition of 1874, organized in protest against the conservatism of the Académie de Beaux Arts that vetted the annual displays of the Paris…
Read more #983 A studio of one’s own
Gone Viking: A Travel Saga by Bill Arnott Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $25.00 / 9781771604475 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Most of the stories in Bill Arnott’s Gone Viking describe travel around Britain and the North Atlantic world. A unifying theme is the imprint left on many of these places by those Scandinavian…
Read more #982 Notable Viking networks
The Brideship Wife by Leslie Howard Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2020 $24.99 / 9781508259350 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Leslie Howard’s fictional interpretation of an 1860s journey to the new world on board of one of the famous bride ships is one of the best of many I have read on this subject. The Brideship…
Read more #981 Voyage to Vancouver Island
Christmas in Mariposa: Sketches of Canada’s Legendary Little Town by Jamie Lamb Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $19.95 / 9781772032871 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * It wasn’t until I was in grad school that I realised that fiction and myth, far from being cultural fripperies divorced from the practical matters of life, can be just as…
Read more #980 Ode to small town Ontario
Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats) by Lorna Crozier Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland and Stewart), 2020 $29.95 / 9780771021183 Reviewed by Kathy Mezei * We know of famous, sometimes notorious, writing couples — Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Simone Beauvoir and Jean-Paul…
Read more #979 A fiery & persevering love affair
Hammer & Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman by Kate Braid Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2020 $22.95 / 9781773860336 Reviewed by Jennifer Chutter * Kate Braid’s new memoir, Hammer & Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman, provides glimpses of her life as a carpenter, primarily in the Lower Mainland, during the 1970s and 1980s. Through a series…
Read more #978 Crazy about lumber