Reviews

Mad for Ads: How Advertising Gets (and Stays) in Our Heads

Three thousand. Studies report that’s how many advertising messages we see in a single day. From bus shelters to television commercials to sports uniforms, they’re everywhere – and designed to affect how we think and ... Read More »

May 3, 2021 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Kids’ Books, Reviews

★ This Eden

By Ed O’Loughlin

This Eden, the propulsive new novel from Irish-Canadian writer and journalist Ed O’Loughlin, begins with a meet-cute. Alice and Michael are both students in the University of British Columbia’s engineering program, and their first contact ... Read More »

May 3, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Shadow Life

By Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu (ill.)

Award-winning novelist and poet Hiromi Goto has written her first graphic novel, illustrated by debut artist Ann Xu. Together in Shadow Life, they tell the tale of Kumiko, an elderly woman who battles the shadow ... Read More »

April 29, 2021 | Filed under: Graphica, Reviews

★ Speak, Silence

By Kim Echlin

In May 1993, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in response to the horrendous crimes perpetrated against civilians during the region’s conflicts in the 1990s. The tribunal’s objective ... Read More »

April 26, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Blood Washing Blood: Afghanistan’s Hundred-Year War

By Phil Halton

Afghanistan is often imagined by North Americans to be either an inferno of endless turmoil and repression of women or a rest stop for hippies seeking enlightenment, drugs, and groovy carpets. In our popular imagination, ... Read More »

April 22, 2021 | Filed under: History, Reviews

Second Place

By Rachel Cusk

Like much of Rachel Cusk’s writing, Second Place feels more like a conduit for philosophical and cultural thought than mere storytelling. Told in the first person, Cusk’s 11th work of fiction recounts a summer in ... Read More »

April 19, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

This Is the Voice

By John Colapinto

“Project your voice without fear or favor,” John Colapinto writes in his new book, This Is the Voice. “Be aware of its full, fantastic range of expression, and revel in it.” This exploration of our ... Read More »

April 15, 2021 | Filed under: Reviews, Science, Technology & Environment

Foregone

By Russell Banks

Midway through Foregone, the latest novel from Russell Banks, the main character recalls a woman who published a memoir titled My Autobiography as I Remember It. Banks’s protagonist, a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker named Leonard Fife, ... Read More »

April 12, 2021 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Exhibitionist

By Molly Cross-Blanchard

In their debut collections, Tara Borin and Molly Cross-Blanchard both profess the longing and desire of relationships. While Borin connects their poems’ characters – whether dead or alive, human or animal – with location and ... Read More »

April 8, 2021 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews