Michael Ondaatje’s latest collection is impossibly good. It is the work of a mature poet at the zenith of his talent. T. S. Eliot wrote, “The mature poet, in the operations of his mind, works ... Read More »
Eynhallow, one of the smaller Orkney Islands, is a rugged, inhospitable place. Seventy-five hectares in size, it is a mere speck in the North Atlantic, now preserved as a bird sanctuary. As Toronto writer Tim ... Read More »
March 13, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels
Seven years after #MeToo rocked global consciousness and Time named Silence Breakers their Person of the Year, sexual violence survivors face a bleak landscape of rising femicide rates, online misogyny, and an increasingly unbelieving culture ... Read More »
March 6, 2024 | Filed under: Media, Politics & Current Affairs, Reference, Reviews, Social Sciences
Interesting Facts about Space, the sophomore novel from Emily Austin (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead), orbits Enid, an information architect at the Canadian Space Agency, who – true to the book’s title ... Read More »
February 28, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
At first glance, the valley is inviting, deeply so. Verdant with orchards and vineyards that overlook a lake, and situated in a leisurely era before cellphones, Instagram Stories, and overtourism, the unnamed region appears idyllic, ... Read More »
February 21, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
Canadian literature is a multilingual territory, and I will admit that my first introduction to the work and life of French-Canadian poet Marie Uguay comes with the recent publication of her journals in translation. As ... Read More »
February 7, 2024 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Poetry, Reviews
Cold, the chilling new thriller from prolific Ojibway writer Drew Hayden Taylor, begins with a plane crash. Journalist Fabiola Halan, one of two passengers in a Cessna piloted by Merle Thompson, is on a press ... Read More »
January 17, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
With Apparitions, Saskatoon writer and Deaf awareness advocate Adam Pottle (Voice: Adam Pottle on Writing with Deafness) has crafted perhaps the most unsettling novel of the year, an account of violence and despair, isolation and ... Read More »
December 13, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
Brandon Reid’s debut novel Beautiful Beautiful centres around 12-year-old Derik Mormin, who is Heiltsuk through his father and English through his mother. After living in the city for all of his life, he is detached ... Read More »
December 13, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews
The pitch for an article on “demystifying the writing process” that I received in my email within days of reading The Cobra and the Key was the kind of odd, grandiosely worded missive you might ... Read More »
December 13, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews