Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Karnival

By Michael Mortensen

From its evocative opening sentences to its startling yet inevitable finale, Karnival, the debut novel from American expatriate and long-time Toronto resident Michael Mortensen, weaves a compelling spell. Mortensen draws on his 15 years of ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Dutch Wife

By Eric McCormack

From the novel’s first image – a stall-keeper idly winding an endless parasite out of his belly – this is vintage Eric McCormack Gothic. That horrifying “Guinea worm,” along with other curious phrases such as ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Tom Thomson’s Last Paddle

By Larry McCloskey

In Tom Thomson’s Last Paddle, Ottawa author Larry McCloskey puts an intrepid pair of 12-year-old crime-solving girls, Dani and Caitlin, on the trail of a wilderness mystery that’s rooted in Canadian history. The girls, on ... Read More »

January 12, 2004

Tess

By Jocelyn Reekie

Writing in the voice of a character living 150 years ago, a contemporary author has tricky choices to make about language and idiom, and about attitudes to social issues on which public opinion has changed ... Read More »

January 12, 2004

Maud’s House of Dreams

By Janet Lunn

Reading Janet Lunn’s new biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery, it’s often easy to forget that this is in fact the life of Montgomery, not one of her famous fictional creations. It’s hardly surprising since, as ... Read More »

January 12, 2004