Photo essay: Revolving W and Flying Pigs: A Neon Journal by Keith McKellar (Laughing Hand), with an introduction by Robert Amos Victoria: BoneYard Ink Books, 2018 $50.00 / 9781775357704 Orders: direct from www.laughinghand.com A photo essay by Keith McKellar and Robert Amos * In December 2018 we published a review (Ormsby Review #449) by Grahame…
Read more #614 Waterfront industry & memory
Green Gold: The Epic True Story of Victorian Plant Hunter John Jeffrey by Gabriel Hemery £15 (U.K.) / 9781789650242 London: Unbound, 2019 Reviewed by Michael Layland * Had I not been familiar with the protagonist, John Jeffrey, I doubt if I would have taken the trouble to acquire and read Green Gold. The artwork of…
Read more #613 The baffling fate of John Jeffrey
The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family by Lindsay Wong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527369 Reviewed by Imogene Lim First published January 17, 2019 * Editor’s note: this review was first published in The Ormsby Review in January 2019. Somehow it disappeared when material…
Read more #612 Chinese ghosts, Chinese identity
Song Book: 21 Songs From 10 Years (1964-74) by Fiona McQuarrie Walthamstow, UK: New Haven Publishing, 2018 $24.00 / 9781912587155 Reviewed by Randolph Eustace-Walden * It’s been said that if you remember the 1960s you weren’t there. Well, I do, and I was. And like many others of my generation, the music of that time…
Read more #611 A baby boomer’s songbook
Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry by Vera Manuel (author) and Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, Joanne Arnott, Emalene A. Manuel (editors) Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9780887558368 Reviewed by Diana French * Vera Manuel (1949-2010), actor, playwright, poet, drama therapist, and healer has been honoured with an anthology of…
Read more #610 Secwépemc playwright honoured
Mistakes to Run With: A Memoir by Yasuko Thanh Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Hamish Hamilton), 2019 $24.95 / 9780735234413 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * On March 12, 2020, Yasuko Thanh’s Mistakes to Run With: A Memoir was one of five books shortlisted for the 2020 Jim Deva Prize (for “writing that provokes”) from the…
Read more #609 The pen is mightier than the street
New Ground: A Memoir of Art and Activism in BC’s Interior by Ann Kujundzic, with a foreword by Mary Schendlinger Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9781773860015 Reviewed by Luanne Armstrong * I love memoirs like this. And really, we need so many more of them. So many stories still remain to be told,…
Read more #608 Kootenay art and activism
Island Home: Out and About on Vancouver Island by Anny Scoones Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2019 $20.00 / 9781771512589 Reviewed by Heather Graham * With five titles already to her credit before the publication of Island Home: Out and About on Vancouver Island, Anny Scoones has established herself as a certain kind of writer with a…
Read more #607 Anny’s island
Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life after Sexual Assault by Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee (editors), with a foreword by Jessica Valenti Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2019 $22.95 / 9781771643733 Reviewed by Kimberly Webster and Chris Montoya * This book will piss you off. Who wants to be the perfect — or…
Read more #606 Whatever gets you through
Along the E&N: A Journey Back to the Historic Hotels of Vancouver Island by Glen Mofford Victoria: TouchWood Press, 2019 $22.00 / 9781771512879 Reviewed by Ian J.M. Kennedy * For 125 years, beginning in 1886, the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway served as Vancouver Island’s main railway line running from Victoria to Courtenay, with branch lines…
Read more #605 Island hotels & beer parlours
Our Coloured Past: The Arrow Lakes in the Age of Colour Photography by Kyle Kusch Nakusp: Arrow Lakes Historical Society, 2019 $30.00 / 9780969423683 Reviewed by Duff Sutherland * In Our Coloured Past: The Arrow Lakes in the Age of Colour Photography, Kyle Kusch presents 350 colour photographs from the collection of Nakusp’s Arrow Lakes…
Read more #604 BC Hydro’s destructive legacy
The Nature of Canada by Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn (editors) Vancouver: UBC Press [On Point Press],2019 $29.95 / 9780774890366 Reviewed by Jenny Clayton * A collaborative effort by some of the leading scholars in the field, The Nature of Canada offers a fresh look at Canadian environmental history. Wishing to showcase research supported…
Read more #603 Deep time to time slipping away
Sodom Road Exit by Amber Dawn Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $21.95 / 9781551527161 Reviewed by Ben Matthews * There is a moment in Amber Dawn’s Sodom Road Exit when a character reads a letter that she is so certain is a breakup letter, that it becomes one. The words on the page, the love…
Read more #602 Second chance at Crystal Beach
The Three Pleasures by Terry Watada Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2017 $24.99 / 9781772140958 Reviewed by Michael Kluckner * One of the touchstones of Canadian historical fiction is Obasan, Joy Kogawa’s gentle, autobiographical 1981 story of a Japanese-Canadian childhood disrupted by the racism of the Second World War years in British Columbia. With its cast of…
Read more #601 Notice to all Japanese Persons
Worry Stones by Joanna Lilley Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2018 $18.95 / 9781553805410 Reviewed by Jenna Butler * There’s more than a touch of the autobiographical about Joanna Lilley’s first novel, the beautifully poetic Worry Stones. Originally from the UK, Lilley emigrated to Canada in 2006 and now calls Whitehorse home, in much the same way…
Read more #600 Rolling into Whitehorse
Interwoven Lives: Indigenous Mothers of Salish Coast Communities by Candace Wellman Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2019 $27.95 (U.S.) / 9780874223644 Reviewed by Marie Elliott * Researching settlement history can take you in many directions, some more challenging than others. While helping people with their family histories at the Washington State Archives in Bellingham,…
Read more #599 Coast Salish women revealed
Dead Flowers by Alexander Laidlaw Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2019 $19.95 / 9780889713550 Reviewed by Heather Graham * Dead Flowers is a collection of eight stories by a young writer who currently calls the Sunshine Coast home. As far as the reader can tell, only one of the stories, “On Gordon Head,” is actually set in…
Read more #598 Alienated and unmotivated
Extraordinary Ornamental Edibles: 100 Perennials, Trees, Shrubs and Vines for Canadian Gardens by Mike Lascelle Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre 2018 $24.95 / 9781771621793 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * This is quite the book — or guide, as the publishers like to refer to it. The author, Mike Lascelle, is currently a nursery manager at…
Read more #597 Lascelle’s ordinary & exotic food
Jim Christy: A Vagabond Life by Ian Cutler, with a foreword by Luis E. Navia Port Angeles, WA: Feral House, 2019 $17.95 (U.S.) / 9781627310741 Reviewed by John Moore * Literary biography is a problematic genre. Ostensibly, its purpose is to illuminate the author’s work, but writing about an author inevitably means competing with a…
Read more #596 Escape from the fish farm
Visual Inspection by Matt Rader Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2019 $18.95 / 9780889713567 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * I don’t live with an autoimmune disease and probably – hopefully — neither do you. I haven’t had to scramble from doctor to doctor for answers or decode what is different about my body, what is or isn’t…
Read more #595 Mind your imperfection