Quill and Quire

Reviews

Migration Songs

By Anna Quon

The title of Anna Quon’s debut novel doesn’t accurately convey its spirit. One might expect a slow, pastoral narrative with lots of nature metaphors, but this is nothing of the sort. Though the novel is ... Read More »

November 30, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Daniel O’Thunder

By Ian Weir

To a certain literary sensibility, the phrase “historical novel” has become shorthand for pretty much everything that is wrong with contemporary “literary” fiction. We’ve come to expect these books to be long-winded, conventional morality tales ... Read More »

November 23, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Hymn

By John Barton

To borrow from Robert Frost, something there is in Hymn that doesn’t love a full stop. The majority of the poems in this book are written in a headlong, breathless manner, with nary a period ... Read More »

October 16, 2009 | Filed under: Poetry

Track & Trace

By Zachariah Wells

Born on Prince Edward Island, currently based in Halifax, frequent Q&Q contributor Zachariah Wells is a Maritime poet of direct speech and muscular lexicon, both of which can be counted among the legacies of fellow ... Read More »

October 16, 2009 | Filed under: Poetry

8 x 10

By Michael Turner

Michael Turner’s previous novel, The Pornographer’s Poem, employed a variety of narrative forms, including letters, film scripts, diary entries, and monologues. His latest work, 8×10, is similarly unconventional: a collection of fragments intricately assembled to ... Read More »

October 16, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels