Reviews

★ Consent

At first it seems like a mistake, or a moment of authorial laziness. The opening sentences in Annabel Lyon’s third novel for adults contain what appears to be a series of unconscious repetitions: “The baby ... Read More »

December 10, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Field Notes from a Pandemic: A Journey through a World Suspended

By Ethan Lou

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended everything we know. Isolation, fear, and confusion reign; for many, the world no longer makes any sense. Journalist Ethan Lou’s non-fiction debut serves as one possible map for this fog ... Read More »

December 10, 2020 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews

knot body

By Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a queer mixed Arab poet working out of Montreal. Their work to date has sought to open up explorations of queerness, family, culture, and diaspora, and of the strange process ... Read More »

December 7, 2020 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

★ Stoop City

By Kristyn Dunnion

What an assured and attractively variegated collection of stories. Set in Toronto and small-town southern Ontario, Kristyn Dunnion’s 13 short pieces are marvellous feats of pacing and styling bolstered by vibrant characterization and enviable turns ... Read More »

December 7, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews

One Madder Woman

By Dede Crane

It’s hard to imagine from today’s vantage that some of Édouard Manet’s most celebrated paintings, including Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, with its female nude picnicker gazing defiantly at the viewer, were decreed artistically worthless when ... Read More »

December 3, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Written in Stone

By Peter Unwin

Linda first meets Paul at the cast party for a no-budget production of Beckett’s Happy Days in which Linda stars. Paul approaches Linda and asks if she’s any good with a canoe. When Linda begs ... Read More »

November 30, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Blaze Island

By Catherine Bush

Coming into Catherine Bush’s Blaze Island is akin to entering a world with a large cast of characters, not unlike a Charles Dickens novel. While Dickens’s novels are cultural artifacts of their time, Bush’s book ... Read More »

November 26, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Hammer and Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman

By Kate Braid

Years back, I remember listening to Kate Braid read poems from Turning Left to the Ladies and being awed by the way she lyrically broke open the male-dominated world of construction – a field in ... Read More »

November 23, 2020 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Waiting for a Star to Fall

By Kerry Clare

Toronto writer Kerry Clare’s sophomore novel begins with the fall of superstar politician Derek Murdoch. Standing accused of sexual assault, Derek denies the anonymous allegations at a press conference, viewed via livestream by his most ... Read More »

November 19, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Black Matters

By Afua Cooper; Wilfried Raussert (photog.)

The world of Burning Sugar – the intimately powerful debut from Vancouver poet and activist Cicely Belle Blain – is, above all else, dynamic, always moving, tracing arcs and trajectories, modes of learning and loving. ... Read More »

November 16, 2020 | Filed under: Poetry, Reviews

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