Reviews

Lightfoot

How does a biographer say something new and insightful about well-known public figures who have already had large dollops of ink spilled on their behalf? Authors David Yaffe and Nicholas Jennings take distinctly different approaches ... Read More »

November 6, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Ghost Warning

By Kara Stanley

Seventeen-year-old Lou James recalls her journalist father saying to her in a moment of reflection, “Maybe there is no point in living or dying, other than the overarching point that we are biological organisms trying ... Read More »

October 31, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Montreal Noir

By Jacques Filippi (ed.); John McFetridge (ed.)

There is a particular sensibility associated with the noir genre in both film and literature. Steeped in shadow and gloom, with origins in German expressionism, the noir temperament is saturated in booze, sex, and sin. ... Read More »

October 31, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

A Thousand Consolations

By Julie Roorda

“Love is not an emotion, but a sense.” Thus begins Julie Roorda’s sweetly funny debut novel, a story of the unexpected romance between Paula, a grieving Toronto widow, and Héctor Vargas, a pianist on the ... Read More »

October 26, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment

By Claude Lalumière

There is a Monty Python sketch from 1969 called “Candid Photography” (or sometimes simply “Nudge, Nudge”), in which a young rake interrogates an older, conservative man about his sex life by means of cryptic but ... Read More »

October 24, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Brief History of Oversharing: One Ginger’s Anthology of Humiliation

By Shawn Hitchins

Shawn Hitchins dedicates his debut collection of essays to two people: “Harrison Ford, for making me gay,” and “my father, for making me a comedian.” That salty-sweet-salty combination is Hitchins’s go-to mode in A Brief ... Read More »

October 17, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ Louis Undercover

By Fanny Britt; Isabelle Arsenault (ill.); Christelle Morelli (trans.); Susan Ouriou (trans.)

Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault follow up their Governor General’s Literary Award–winning Jane, the Fox and Me with a second graphic novel collaboration of equal acuity. The titular protagonist of Louis Uncover is a perceptive ... Read More »

October 17, 2017 | Filed under: Graphica, Kids’ Books

A Reckoning

By Linda Spalding

The biblical principle of the sins of the father being visited upon the sons is very much at play in Linda Spalding’s follow-up to her 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award winner, The Purchase. That novel ... Read More »

October 17, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit

By Lynn Gehl

In the Anishinaabe culture, “Mino-pimadiziwin” means “the good life.” In context, Mino-pimadiziwin can be understood as a wholistic life, one that includes fostering a relationship to land and community, and sharing knowledge with others. Lynn ... Read More »

October 16, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

To Me You Seem Giant

By Greg Rhyno

The most effective vehicles for nostalgia are often sensory: the sight of former stomping grounds revisited after time away; the unbearably saccharine wave of the vodka coolers you swore off after too many notoriously bad ... Read More »

October 10, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

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