Reviews

Passing Through

Toronto author David Penhale’s first novel is a kind of coming-of-age story for those on the cusp of retirement. Life lessons can be avoided for decades, but maturity can be put off only for so ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Carapace

By Laura Lush

Laura Lush’s third collection is awash in dualities: it is as much a celebration of life and new beginnings as a metaphysical journey into the notion of endings. The poems constantly switch from ironic to ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Groundwork

By Amanda Jernigan

Amanda Jernigan’s debut poetry collection forwards a critique of contemporary aesthetics and knowledge production. From archaeological excavations in modern-day Tunisia to a stop in the Garden of Eden (en route to the islands of Homer’s ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Tell It to the Trees

By Anita Rau Badami

Anita Rau Badami’s fourth novel steps lightly along the familiar path laid down by her previous books, telling the story of an Indian family dealing with trauma, intrigue, and complex relationships. The Dharma family lives ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Reverse Cowgirl

By David Whitton

A collection’s titular story is almost never the best piece in it. There could be any number of reasons to explain this tendency: authors are not always the best judges of their work, or certain ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Eye Lake

By Tristan Hughes

“Everyone has always met everyone else in Crooked River. I forget that sometimes.” When Eli O’Callaghan speaks these words in Tristan Hughes’s fourth novel, we understand them to be both a typical sentiment about small ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Dog on the Bed: A Canine Alphabet

By Richard Teleky

Writers who choose dogs as their subjects are often doomed not to be taken seriously. Despite the fact that literary legends like Jack London and Virginia Woolf tackled the canine/human bond, writing focused on man’s ... Read More »

December 19, 2011 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca

By Carol Bishop-Gwyn

Back in the 1990s, when the first biography of Celia Franca was attempted, the haughty ballet diva snatched half the advance money the publisher gave to author Frank Rasky and demanded “complete control” over the ... Read More »

December 12, 2011 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Algoma

By Dani Couture

Toronto poet Dani Couture’s debut novel begins almost mythically, with 11-year-old Leo Beaudoin falling through river ice in the small mill town of Le Pin, a few hours northwest of Quebec City. The rest of ... Read More »

December 5, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Writing the Revolution

By Michele Landsberg

While second-wave feminism had been mounting for more than a decade by the mid-1970s, there was scant evidence of it in mainstream Toronto media. For “libber” news, you needed to seek out Broadside, Toronto’s feminist ... Read More »

November 28, 2011 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

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