Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Maurice Richard

By Charles Foran

Ask any patriotic Canadian what this country’s greatness is based on, and you’re liable to receive two responses: hockey and health care. New instalments of Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians titles (which comprise two of the ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Tommy Douglas

By Vincent Lam

Ask any patriotic Canadian what this country’s greatness is based on, and you’re liable to receive two responses: hockey and health care. New instalments of Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians titles (which comprise two of the ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Arrhythmia

By Alice Zorn

Alice Zorn’s first novel follows five Montrealers as they navigate critical junctures in their relationships. Joelle, a former film student now working as a medical secretary, has just turned 40. Her husband, Marc, has become ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Meagre Tarmac

By Clark Blaise

Like many authors largely focused on the short story form, Clark Blaise is known more by reputation than for his accomplished and eclectic body of work. Though his fiction explores questions of identity, ethnicity, and ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

The O’Briens

By Peter Behrens

Compared to the relative restraint of his 2006 Governor General’s Literary Award–winning first novel, The Law of Dreams, which chronicled, over the course of a year, an Irish emigrant’s attempt to flee to Canada during ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

And Me Among Them

By Kristen den Hartog

Rather than exploit its seven-foot-two-inch tall narrator as a kind of grotesque spectacle, Kristen den Hartog’s new novel uses the character’s unusual physique as a way of illuminating the world from an extraordinary perspective. Ruth ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels