Reviews

★ The Hollow Beast

By Christophe Bernard; Lazer Lederhendler (trans.)

Christophe Bernard’s epic debut novel opens with what under any other circumstances would sound like a tall tale. In the last moments of the annual Gaspé diocese junior hockey tournament’s final game, the underdogs, a ... Read More »

May 8, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Behind You

By Catherine Hernandez

If you lived in or near Toronto in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you probably have some recollection of the Scarborough Rapist’s reign of terror. If you are a woman, its impact is likely ... Read More »

May 7, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Village Weavers

By Myriam J.A. Chancy

Myriam J.A. Chancy’s Village Weavers captures the origins, intersections, and ruptures of a lifelong friendship between Simone (Sisi) Val and Gertude (Gertie) Alcindor. The novel’s scope is ambitious, as it leaps between 1940s Port-au-Prince, 1970s ... Read More »

May 1, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Crying Dress

By Cassidy McFadzean

“The most interesting part of architecture is the non-functioning,” writes Cassidy McFadzean in “Pier Evil,” one of the poems in her third collection. In a later poem, McFadzean clarifies this observation: “Fluting’s the only feature ... Read More »

April 24, 2024 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

★ Teeth

By Dallas Hunt

Dallas Hunt’s Teeth is a stirring follow-up to Creeland, his first book of poetry. In “Cree Dictionary,” from his debut collection, Hunt begins with a witty redefinition of terms: “the translation for joy / in ... Read More »

April 10, 2024 | Filed under: Indigenous Peoples, Poetry, Reviews

★ The Seventh Town of Ghosts

By Faith Arkorful

Faith Arkorful’s debut book, The Seventh Town of Ghosts, is a collection of lyric poems suffused with a heart-centred intelligence. These poems move through grief, memory, and joy with the insight of “a black girl ... Read More »

April 3, 2024 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

Dayspring

By Anthony Oliveira

In his genre-bending debut novel, Dayspring, Toronto writer Anthony Oliveira has crafted a truly one-of-a-kind depiction of the life of Jesus Christ – reimagined from the perspective of the apostle John, described in the Bible ... Read More »

April 3, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ The Lantern and the Night Moths: Five Modern and Contemporary Chinese Poets Selected and Translated by Yilin Wang

By Yilin Wang

The Lantern and the Night Moths is an exceptional book of translations and literary criticism by poet-translator Yilin Wang. Wang’s original translations of five Chinese poets and her accompanying essays (one per poet) make for ... Read More »

March 27, 2024 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

The Gift Child

By Elaine McCluskey

To explain the plot of Elaine McCluskey’s The Gift Child is both to give everything away and to reveal nothing important. Although the novel does, in the words of its narrator Harriett Swim, take us ... Read More »

March 20, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ A Year of Last Things

By Michael Ondaatje

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 »

March 13, 2024 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

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