March 12, 2013 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
Known in her native Quebec mainly as a humorist, Lise Dion is being introduced to English-speaking Canadians on a far more sombre note. The Secret of the Blue Trunk (in a fluid translation by Liedewij ... Read More »
Addiction memoirs have proliferated in recent decades, crowding a genre once limited to a handful of classics such as the gentlemanly Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and the hilariously hedonistic Fear and Loathing in Las ... Read More »
March 12, 2013 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
The well-meaning among us who adopt a dog from a shelter have, at one point or another, all experienced the nagging doubt that we can actually take full responsibility for that beast in the cage. ... Read More »
February 21, 2013 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
On Jan. 12, 2010, Montreal journalist and novelist Dany Laferrière was having dinner with a friend at a Port au Prince hotel when he heard what he thought was a “terrible explosion.” What he actually ... Read More »
February 21, 2013 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
There’s a one-man show – and, possibly, a standup routine – dying to leap out of the pages of Words to Live By, the amusing memoir by William Whitehead – actor, documentary writer, and, by ... Read More »
December 10, 2012 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
If you’re under the age of 45, chances are you’ve heard of the Canada–Soviet Union Summit Series only in the hushed tones reserved for great and important events. Paul Henderson, a hard-working kid from Lucknow, ... Read More »
December 10, 2012 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography
One thing cops and hockey players have in common is they’re not big on showing emotion. If you’re gonna fight criminals or win the Stanley Cup, you have to be tough. Same goes for hockey ... Read More »
December 10, 2012 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
It might not count as the most illuminating anecdote in Sylvie Simmons’ exhaustive new biography of Leonard Cohen, but it surely lingers as one of the more memorable. In the mid 1990s, Cohen, by then ... Read More »
December 3, 2012 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
The long and fruitful life of P.K. Page, one of Canada’s most respected poets and artists, is expertly revealed in Sandra Djwa’s detailed biography. Born in 1916, when women’s options were even more circumscribed than ... Read More »
November 26, 2012 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
One thing is certain: William Stevenson has led an uncommon life. Wartime aviator, journalist, intelligence operative, filmmaker, friend to presidents and kings, confidant to socialist agents, amateur marine biologist – he has donned countless lifetimes’ ... Read More »
October 16, 2012 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography