The Great Happiness: Stories and Comics by M.A.C. Farrant Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2019 $14.95 / 9781772012217 Reviewed by Valerie Green * I’ve learned through the years that book covers can be deceiving. Such was the case with M.A.C. Farrant’s book The Great Happiness, which shows a young girl, some flowers, and a small bird. It enticed…
Read more #671 Connect the dots
The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected by Edwin Wong Victoria: FriesenPress Publishers, 2019 $19.79 / 9781525537561 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * The most interesting observation in this book on tragedy by local author Edwin Wong concerns Hamlet. Hamlet’s problem, says Wong, is that he is obsessed with certainty and can’t…
Read more #670 Novelty at Langham Court
Every Little Scrap and Wonder: A Small-Town Childhood by Carla Funk Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2019 $29.95 / 9781771644662 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * With exquisite detail, Carla Funk brings alive her childhood in Vanderhoof, BC, and by doing so sets off in me a memoryfest of my own, an experience that is likely to happen…
Read more #669 A Mennonite memoryfest
Cedar + Salt: Vancouver Island Recipes from Forest, Farm, Field, and Sea by D.L. Acken and Emily Lycopolus Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019 $45.00 / 9781771512947 Reviewed by Harvey De Roo * Is it that books published on the Pacific Northwest coast are particularly beautiful, or just any book with the photos of Danielle Acken and…
Read more #668 Eating local on Vancouver Island
Around the World in a Dugout Canoe by John M. MacFarlane and Lynn J. Salmon Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $29.95 / 9781550178791 Reviewed by Mark Forsythe * There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea — Joseph Conrad The Tilikum is legendary in B.C.’s maritime history, and her captain…
Read more #667 Canoeing to London
Invisible Generations: Living between Indigenous and White in the Fraser Valley by Jean Barman Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860053 Reviewed by Duff Sutherland * In the early 1990s, a mutual friend introduced the historian Jean Barman to a retired teacher from the Fraser Valley, Irene Kelleher. Of Indigenous and European heritage, Kelleher…
Read more #666 Life of a gifted teacher
Salt and Ashes by Adrienne Drobnies Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2019 $17.95 / 9781773240480 Reviewed by John Swanson * Adrienne Drobnies’ Salt and Ashes is a powerful, intimate book, a journey marked by a legacy of early pain and power inflicted — the old suffering, then the new; the loss of a beloved husband, the grief,…
Read more #665 Poems of grief and acceptance
The Survival Guide to British Columbia by Ian Ferguson Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $19.95 / 9781772032840 Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * The Survival Guide to British Columbia offers some useful information about the province but it is unlike a Boy Scout handbook or a Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture publication. Ian Ferguson seeks…
Read more #664 Bring cash and raincoat
Four Who Dared: Inspiring Stories of Canadian Airmen in the Second World War by Kenneth B. Cothliff Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $22.95 / 9781772032949 Reviewed by Sylvia Crooks * We are losing our Canadian veterans of the Second World War so quickly, now that they are in their nineties and beyond. How grateful we must…
Read more #663 Canadians in Bomber Command
The Brightest Thing by Ruth Daniell Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781987915907 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * New from Ruth Daniell of Kelowna is The Brightest Thing, a book that tells the journey of a nameless young woman through four sections of beautifully written poetry structured around fairy tales. Fairy tales, of course,…
Read more #662 A young woman’s journey
Nothing to Write Home About: British Family Correspondence and the Settler Colonial Everyday in British Columbia by Laura Ishiguro Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780774838443 Reviewed by Robert Hogg * In Nothing to Write Home About, Laura Ishiguro presents us with an opportunity to enlarge our ideas of nineteenth century colonial life, inviting us…
Read more #661 No direction home
The New Beachcomber’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest by J. Duane Sept Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $32.95 / 9781550178371 (first published in 1999 by Harbour as The Beachcomber’s Guide to Seashore Life in the Pacific Northwest; reprinted 2002; second edition 2009; third edition 2019) * Seaside Treasures: A Guidebook for Little Beachcombers by Sarah…
Read more #660 For the love of the North Pacific
A One-Handed Novel by Kim Clark Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin, 2018 $24.00 / 9781987915624 Reviewed by Margot Fedoruk * What is the difference between desirability and disability? Author Kim Clark explores these ideas and more in her fast-paced and farcical work of fiction, A One-Handed Novel. The book’s main character, Melanie Farrell, is a forty-something, face-planting,…
Read more #659 Move over Bridget Jones
A Mysterious Humming Noise: New Poems by Howard White Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781772141412 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * Let’s start with the cover. None of your “art-whatever” declarations of sacred intent, pretty pictures promising verbal home decoration: this is a kitchen cover promising kitchen music, including a toe tapper, a fiddle, and…
Read more #658 Plain words in a plain wrapper
The Lieutenant Governors of British Columbia by Jenny Clayton, with a foreword by Janet Austin Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2019 $26.95 / 9781550178647 Reviewed by Patrick A. Dunae * The Office of the Lieutenant Governor is perhaps best known to the public for its pageantry. But it has an important constitutional function. It was created…
Read more #657 Government House calling
The Forbidden Purple City: Stories by Philip Huynh Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions 2019 $22.95 / 9781773100784 Reviewed by William New * Editor’s note: We are pleased to report that on February 6, 2020, The Forbidden Purple City: Stories was shortlisted for the annual George Ryga Award, given to a B.C. writer who has achieved an outstanding…
Read more #656 Facing all the ghosts
Implicating the System: Judicial Discourses in the Sentencing of Indigenous Women by Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019 $34.95 / 9780887558283 Reviewed by David Milward * The crisis of Indigenous over-incarceration in Canada remains an ongoing issue of national importance. Statistical estimates as of 2016 are that Indigenous inmates amount to 27% of…
Read more #655 The Gladue rights revolution
The House the Spirit Builds by Lorna Crozier, with Peter Coffman and Diane Landy (photography) and Rena Upitis (introduction) Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $22.95 / 9781771622417 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * The natural world has long been de rigueur to the life of poets and artists, the Chinese poet Han Shan (寒山, literally…
Read more #654 When images yield poems
Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers by Susan Scott (editor), with a foreword by Alison Pick Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781987915938 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * Susan Scott skillfully curates and edits experiences across many cultures and faiths for Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers. This collection of personal…
Read more #653 Sinners, seekers, and sceptics
Ranch Tales: Stories from the Frontier by Ken Mather Victoria: Heritage House, 2019 $19.95 / 9781772031881 Reviewed by Warren Elofson * Ken Mather’s Ranch Tales is a readable and interesting account of ranching in what is now British Columbia from the establishment of the Alkali Lake Ranch in 1861 to the twentieth century. Mather provides…
Read more #652 Mather’s ranch tales