Reviews

★ Sister Language

Some authors are experimental by choice; others come by it biochemically. Toronto writers Martha Baillie and Christina Baillie, sisters as well as creators of the idiosyncratic co-autobiography Sister Language, have both bases covered. Unconventional in ... Read More »

October 3, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Little Fortress

By Laisha Rosnau

In 1921, the Caetani family – Duke Leone, his wife, Ofelia, and their daughter, Sveva – fled their native Italy for Vernon, B.C., in part because the Duke was anti-Mussolini and wanted to extricate his ... Read More »

September 30, 2019 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Dead Heat

By Benedek Totth; Ildikó Noémi Nagy (trans.)

Early on in Hungarian author Benedek Totth’s debut novel, the unnamed teenaged protagonist has a dream in which his dead father – now with the head of a shark – pleads, “Keep swimming, son, even ... Read More »

September 30, 2019 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Work

By Maria Meindl

In Maria Meindl’s debut novel, set in 1980s Toronto, a stage manager falls for the enigmatic owner of a cutting-edge theatre company. Rebecca Weir joins SenseInSound, whose rehearsals take place in a cold, underground warehouse. ... Read More »

September 30, 2019 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love and War 1930–1949

By Janet Somerville (ed.)

Martha Gellhorn was born in 1908 in St. Louis, Missouri, and almost immediately was desperate to be somewhere else. She left for France in 1930 and embarked on a 60-year career as a foreign correspondent ... Read More »

September 26, 2019 | Filed under: History, Reviews

★ The Forest City Killer: A Serial Murderer, a Cold-Case Sleuth, and a Search for Justice

By Vanessa Brown

In the 1960s, eight people – Jackie English, Jacqueline Dunleavy, Lynda White, Soraya O’Connell, Frankie Jensen, Scott Leishman, Helga Beer, and Bruce Stapylton – were murdered in and around the city of London, Ontario. To ... Read More »

September 26, 2019 | Filed under: History, Reviews

Here I Am!

By Pauline Holdstock

The new novel from Victoria writer Pauline Holdstock begins with six-year-old Frankie sneaking aboard a ship bound for France. His mother has just died, and Frankie’s plan is to cross the ocean, find a police ... Read More »

September 23, 2019 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Even That Wildest Hope

By Seyward Goodhand

On the acknowledgements page of A Dark House, Ian Colford mentions the eight stories were written between 15 and 25 years ago, a period during which he regarded publication as an “impossibly lofty goal.” In ... Read More »

September 19, 2019 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews