Reviews

★ Undersong

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy. So wrote William Wordsworth of his sister, Dorothy, ... Read More »

September 1, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ The Annual Migration of Clouds

By Premee Mohamed

Premee Mohamed imagines a dystopic future in a new novella that is deeply speculative and character driven. Through Mohamed’s breathtaking prose, this post-apocalyptic story unravels meditations on community building, adaptation, and collective survival. The narrative ... Read More »

September 1, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Satched

By Megan Gail Coles

Satched – a slang word for drunk, soaking wet, or weighed down – perfectly captures the tone of this confessional work by Megan Gail Coles, a 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist turning her hand this ... Read More »

September 1, 2021 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

Vagabond: Venice Beach, Slab City and Points in Between

By Ceilidh Michelle

Cheryl Strayed’s blockbuster Wild marked a formidable shift in the women’s memoir category, essentially taking Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love from a Contiki tour to a blistering bootcamp detox. Somewhere along the marketing way, these ... Read More »

August 26, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of  the Fugitive of the Shuswap

By Paul McKendrick

If Netflix is looking for a thriller with suspicious deaths, greed, gold, government corruption, a secret underground cave, and an eccentric lead character, it would do well to consider first-time author Paul McKendrick’s brisk and ... Read More »

August 24, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Singing Forest

By Judith McCormack

The passage of time can shroud awareness of past horrors. What then happens when an atrocity is unearthed decades after the fact? Judith McCormack’s latest novel, The Singing Forest, confronts this question. Two Belarusian boys ... Read More »

August 17, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

A Womb in the Shape of a Heart: My Story of Miscarriage and Motherhood

By Joanne Gallant

Being human means being made up of countless invisible, uncontrollable processes: muscles contracting, neurons firing, cells dividing. Each of these processes has the potential to go catastrophically wrong, and many of us carry in us ... Read More »

August 11, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Weight of Sand: My 450 Days Held Hostage in the Sahara

By Edith Blais; Katia Grubisic (trans.)

In December 2018, Canadian Edith Blais vanished. The 34-year-old had been travelling for some time with her Italian companion, Luca Tacchetto, on their way to pursue a volunteer work opportunity in Togo. Then, while driving ... Read More »

August 10, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology

By Adrian De Leon; Natasha Ramoutar; Téa Mutonji; eds.

In the anthology Changing the Face of Canadian Literature (Guernica Editions), editor Dane Swan discusses the diversity and breadth of Canadian literature, writing in the preface: “Congratulations Canada, you finally have a literature that looks ... Read More »

July 14, 2021 | Filed under: Anthologies, Reviews