In Nature’s Realm: Early Naturalists Explore Vancouver Island by Michael Layland Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019 $40.00 / 9781771513067 * On March 2, 2020, it was announced that Michael Layland’s book, In Nature’s Realm: Early Naturalists Explore Vancouver Island (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019) had won the 2020 Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for outstanding scholarly book on British…
Read more #790 Enter Douglas, Garry & Menzies
INTERVIEW: Tom Wayman with Nathaniel G. Moore * In a future issue of The Ormsby Review, Emma Rhodes will review Tom Wayman’s new book of poems, Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time (Harbour: 2020), and as an appetizer we present an interview with Wayman by Nathaniel G. Moore –…
Read more #789 Protest, empathy, mourning
MEMOIR: The year of the bicycle, 1973: North American backroads at the end of the Indochina War by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Here, for the vicarious pleasure of the many COVID-19 shut-in readers of The Ormsby Review who are unable to travel, is a memoir of an ambitious bicycle journey taken in 1973 by Howard…
Read more #788 The year of the bicycle: 1973
Drafts of Dracula by Bram Stoker, edited and annotated by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller, with a foreword by Dacre Stoker Victoria: Tellwell Talent, 2019 [price varies] / 9780228814290 Order from your local indie bookstore or: $30.95 / 9780228814306 hardbound @ Chapters/Indigo $20.91 / 9780228814290 paperbound @ Chapters/Indigo $9.95 / 9780228814313 ebook @ www.amazon.ca Reviewed…
Read more #787 The everlasting Bram Stoker
Kings of the Yukon: A River Journey in Search of the Chinook by Adam Weymouth, with a foreword by Harold R. Johnson Toronto: Penguin Random House (Knopf Canada), 2019 $21.00 / 9780345811806 Reviewed by Ken Madsen * Why would a young Brit set off on a 3,100 kilometre river trip through the Yukon Territory and…
Read more #786 From Wiltshire to Teslin Lake
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan Toronto: HarperCollins, 2018 $33.99 / 9781443423380 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Since its publication in the summer of 2018, Esi Edugyan’s novel Washington Black has made a resounding impact. Reviews abound; awards and award short listings likewise. Stirring most comment and praise are not just the gripping story line, but…
Read more #785 A New World Oliver Twist
Viaticum by Natelle Fitzgerald Surrey: Now Or Never Publishing, 2019 $19.95 / 9781988098876 Reviewed by Cassidy Jean with Ginny Ratsoy * Natelle Fitzgerald’s Viaticum has been seven years in the making, according to her acknowledgments page, and from this reader’s perspective, this debut work of literary fiction does not disappoint. “Viaticum,” of Latin etymology, can…
Read more #784 Buying time at Annika’s Café
South Away: The Pacific Coast on Two Wheels by Meaghan Marie Hackinen Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2019 $20.95 / 9781988732633 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Meaghan Marie Hackinen’s South Away: The Pacific Coast on Two Wheels is about bicycling down the Pacific coast, from northern British Columbia to the south end of the Baja Peninsula….
Read more #783 Skeena River to Baja California
Cures for Hunger: A Memoir by Deni Ellis Béchard Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2019 (first published by Milkweed Editions, 2012) 22.95 / 9781773101453 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * When I was a girl, growing up on a backwoods farm in southeastern BC, I loved to listen to men talk. They were so sure of themselves….
Read more #782 You work or you starve
The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover’s Cookbook by Emily Lycopolus Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019 (revised and updated second edition; first published 2015) $45.00 / 9781771513029 Reviewed by Natalie Lang * In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” This maxim…
Read more #781 Oil and vinegar, Italy and Canada
Dunk Tank by Kayla Czaga Toronto: House of Anansi, 2019 $19.95 / 9781487005962 Reviewed by Marion Quednau * Reading Kayla Czaga’s “Dunk Tank” is like taking a ride in a hot-wired car from Kitimat, seeing how far it will take you. She’s in the driver’s seat, taking all the risks in a mood of crazy-young,…
Read more #780 A hot-wired car from Kitimat
The Way Home: How a Naïve Single Mom Built her House in the Forest by Terry Faubert Powell River: Steller Books, 2019 $15.00 / 9781096448211 The Way Home is available online through Amazon and Indigo, plus in Powell River at Coles and Ecoessentials, and in Lund at Pollen Sweaters. Terry Faubert can be contacted at…
Read more #779 The building goddess of Lund
MEMOIR: On the road with Sir Kenneth by Grahame Ware * Recently we published Grahame Ware’s review of Horn Swoggled: A Play by Armstrong playwright Ken Smedley: see The Ormsby Review no. 762 (March 5, 2020). In a follow-up email, Grahame described his intense and productive artistic friendship with Smedley in the mid-1990s, when the…
Read more #778 On the road with Sir Kenneth
Waterlogged: Examples and Procedures for Northwest Coast Archaeologists by Kathryn Bernick (editor) Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2019 $32.95 (U.S.) / 9780874223668 Publisher’s note: Canadian residents can obtain WSU titles online via Indigo and other bookstores. Canadian bookstores can purchase WSU books through Ingram. Reviewed by Bob Muckle * Any archaeologist working in British…
Read more #777 Beyond the bias of stone
Kelly Black reviews two books: Henry & Self: An English Gentlewoman at the Edge of Empire by Kathryn Bridge Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 (first published by Sono Nis Press, 1996) $22.95 / 9780772672612 * By Snowshoe, Buckboard and Steamer: Women of the British Columbia Frontier by Kathryn Bridge Victoria: Royal British Columbia…
Read more #776 Five women at the edge of empire
There Are Not Enough Sad Songs by Marita Dachsel Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2019 $19.99 / 9781772124521 * The Broken Face by Russell Thornton Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2018 $18.95 / 9781550178449 Both books reviewed by John Carroll …
Read more #775 Life’s transience and fragility
Chicanery, Civility & Celebrations: Tales of Early Rossland by Ron Shearer Rossland: Rossland Heritage Commission, 2019 $24.95 / 9780228502852 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Golden City Yarns: A Tireless Researcher Digs Out a B.C. Mining Mecca’s Raucous Past, by Ron Verzuh Kootenay history buffs have long savoured the storytelling talents of Ron Shearer, a retired…
Read more #774 Golden City yarns
Agency by William Gibson Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley Books), 2020 $37.00 / 9781101986936 Reviewed by John Belshaw * Fully articulated alternative histories have been around for at least a century. In addition to attempts on the part of scholarly historians to change up the past, there are plenty of storylines in fiction that…
Read more #773 Past imperfect
Bawaajigan: Stories of Power by Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler and Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith (editors) Toronto: Exile Editions, 2019 $21.95 / 9781550968415 Reviewed by Savana Alphonse with Rebecca Fredrickson * Bawaajigan: Stories of Power is a collection of short stories written by seventeen Indigenous authors from Turtle Island, today known as Canada. The stories here serve…
Read more #772 Echoes of spirits dreaming
Lampedusa by Steven Price Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2019 $32.00 / 9780771071683 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * From its jacket photo, which rivets the eye to the top of a stunning gilded inner courtyard in Rome, even as that sky is blocked from the reader, to the epilogue and to the narrative…
Read more #771 A tale of rubble and splendour