Reviews

Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

One doesn’t expect a volume entitled Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll to double as a science textbook, but “Guerilla Scientist” Zoe Cormier’s debut attempts a unique twofer: it wants to have its MDMA-laced cake ... Read More »

March 23, 2015 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

The Night Stages

By Jane Urquhart

At the centre of Jane Urquhart’s new novel is Flight and Its Allegories, a mural painted by the Canadian artist Kenneth Lochhead for the airport in Gander, Newfoundland. This picture links the various time frames ... Read More »

March 19, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Cauchemar

By Alexandra Grigorescu

A veil between the living and the dead is lifted to chilling effect in Cauchemar, the eerie debut novel by Toronto writer Alexandra Grigorescu. Set at the edge of a swamp in present-day Louisiana, the ... Read More »

March 16, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Fatal Glamour: The Life of Rupert Brooke

By Paul Delany

Rupert Brooke is best known for his good looks and his First World War poetry. “The war sonnets,” says Paul Delany, author of a new Brooke biography, “were the most powerful statement, in their time, ... Read More »

March 11, 2015 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Walking Man

By Paul Dore

Filmmaker and podcaster Paul Dore wants to tell the honest-to-goodness truth – by writing it as fiction. The Walking Man flirts with being a confessional chronicle, but, at its best moments, it becomes a globetrotting ... Read More »

March 11, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Meet Me in Venice: A Chinese Immigrant’s Journey from the Far East to the Faraway West

By Suzanne Ma

If you are born in Qingtian, you are destined to leave,” goes a famous refrain about this isolated Chinese county 300 miles south of Shanghai. Migrants started fleeing Qingtian in the 17th century and never ... Read More »

March 11, 2015 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Shameless: The Fight for Adoption Disclosure and the Search for My Son

By Marilyn Churley

Growing up in the Maritimes during the 1970s, it was common to hear it said of an unmarried mother that she “got herself pregnant,” a physical impossibility that placed the onus for the situation – ... Read More »

March 11, 2015 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Signal to Noise

By Silvia Moreno-Garcia

For her debut novel, Silvia Moreno-Garcia attempts to wed disparate literary genres. While not entirely successful, her efforts nonetheless signal a writer with evident gusto for complex storytelling. The first genre involves a character study ... Read More »

March 11, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out

By Karen Solie

In his 2013 Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture, A.F. Moritz said, “Poetry is the form of critical desire, desire always examining itself to find if the joy it comprehends is real, and if all are invited ... Read More »

March 11, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry