Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Underground

By June Hutton

June Hutton’s Underground follows Canadian Al Fraser from his time as a 16-year-old boy soldier in the First World War, through labour jobs and work camps during the Great Depression, to a final combat stint ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Tainted

By Ross Pennie

The latest suspense novel written by a real-life Canadian doctor demonstrates that our country’s contribution to the medical thriller subgenre is not so much evolving as stabilizing. Tainted immediately admits Brantford-based physician-cum-university professor Ross Pennie ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Magpie’s Smile

By Eugene Meese

There is a good – possibly great – crime novel to be written about Calgary’s economic boom in the 1970s, when newcomers with dollar signs dancing in their eyes clashed with local residents resisting gentrification, ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Factory Voice

By Jeanette Lynes

Jeanette Lynes’ debut novel, The Factory Voice, is an entertaining and engaging story set in an airplane factory in Fort William, Ontario, during the Second World War. Lynes, a professor at St. Francis Xavier University, ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The English Stories

By Cynthia Flood

The increasing corporatization of Canadian publishing has left more than a few authors and cultural commentators grumbling about a bottom-line, cookie-cutter approach to everything from manuscript acquisition to cover design. This perceived homogenization and its ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Thought You Were Dead

By Terry Griggs

The increasing corporatization of Canadian publishing has left more than a few authors and cultural commentators grumbling about a bottom-line, cookie-cutter approach to everything from manuscript acquisition to cover design. This perceived homogenization and its ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Night Is a Mouth

By Lisa Foad

In The Night Is a Mouth, Lisa Foad’s first collection of short stories, the protagonists are almost exclusively women: vulnerable and downtrodden women, women who had it rough as girls, women who could use a ... Read More »

April 22, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Breaking Lorca

By Giles Blunt

Current popular culture has an almost unholy fascination with torture, from the singleminded Jack Bauer on 24 to the seemingly innumerable Saw films. Award-winning crime writer Giles Blunt contributes to this canon in Breaking Lorca, ... Read More »

April 22, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels