Reviews

Yesno

UN, Dennis Lee’s previous collection of poetry for adults, represented a significant stylistic departure not only for Lee but for English Canadian poetry in general. Unlike the long, often prosy lines of Civil Elegies, a ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry

The Breakdown So Far

By M.A.C. Farrant

This collection of (very) short stories and literary snapshots is billed as “an unsparing critique” of North American mall culture. It is unsparing. It’s also sometimes witty and clever. Unfortunately, it’s often so busy sneering ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short

The Years of Fire: Charles the Bold, Volume 2

By Yves Beauchemin

For better or worse, the novels of Montreal writer Yves Beauchemin don’t tax his readers’ intellects unduly. The first volume of his Charles the Bold trilogy was so concerned with his hero’s childhood that it ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Out of Character

By Vanessa Craft

Style and music journalist Vanessa Craft cuts her creative teeth with a debut novel about British gentlemen’s clubs. She’s definitely on to something with heroine Emma Gordon, a listless young writer for a British tabloid ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Halifax Connection

By Marie Jakober

Erryn Shaw is an English aristocrat who has fled to Halifax to avoid a dark past. Sylvie Bowen is a working-class girl who has escaped the deadly environment of Lancashire’s cotton mills. Inevitably, they meet, ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Because a Fire Was in My Head

By Lynn Stegner

Kate Riley, the protagonist of Santa Fe, New Mexico author Lynn Stegner’s latest novel, has had a rough go of it. As she faces exploratory brain surgery for what may or may not be a ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Brother Dumb

By Sky Gilbert

Brother Dumb is a long fictional monologue by a famous American writer, a Second World War veteran who becomes a recluse after publishing a huge bestseller in 1951. Living in the woods of New Hampshire, ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ French Kiss: Stephen Harper’s Blind Date with Quebec

By Chantal Hébert

Of all the books that have already been written about the Conservative Party’s 2006 electoral breakthrough, Chantal Hébert’s French Kiss is the most useful to understanding not only Stephen Harper’s victory but the circumstances that ... Read More »

April 2, 2007 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Types of Canadian Women, Volume II

By K.I. Press

Ragged Pen gathers together talks on poetry and memory given by Robert Finley, Patrick Friesen, Aislinn Hunter, Anne Simpson, and Jan Zwicky at the 2005 Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference and fleshes them ... Read More »

March 28, 2007 | Filed under: Poetry