Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

The Tablecloth Trick

By Rick Crilly

Toronto writer Rick Crilly’s debut is labelled as “experimental fiction” by its publisher. This is a fair statement. To less than a hundred pages of fragmented narrative Crilly adds 54 footnotes and 20 endnotes that ... Read More »

June 13, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Right Away Monday

By Joel Thomas Hynes

Clayton Reid, the booze-besotted, drug-addicted ne’er-do-well at the centre of Joel Thomas Hynes’s second novel, bears a striking resemblance to Keith Kavanagh, the shiftless antihero of Down to the Dirt, Hynes’s 2004 debut. Both are ... Read More »

June 12, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Darkwing

By Kenneth Oppel

It’s 65 million years ago, the last dinosaurs are dying out, and Earth’s mammals are living in a time of dramatic upheaval. Dusk is a small tree glider – a chiropter – who discovers that ... Read More »

June 4, 2007 | Filed under: Events

Jakeman

By Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis has never shied away from taking a stand, as her award-winning fiction and non-fiction about AIDS and war attests. She’s firmly on the side of those marginalized by poverty, gender, race, and age. ... Read More »

May 30, 2007

The Royal Woods

By Matt Duggan

The Royal Woods follows the adventures of a young brother and sister who run away from their Toronto home to spend the summer with relatives on a farm in Manitoba. To their dismay, Turk and ... Read More »

May 30, 2007

Better Than Blonde

By Teresa Toten

Despite her realization, at the end of Me and the Blondes, that blondes also have problems, 15-year-old Sophie Kandinsky still longs “to be a Blonde in the deeper, metaphysical, spiritual sense, with a big honking ... Read More »

May 30, 2007

Chin Music

By Gregory Roberts

It’s difficult to resist the temptation to lace this review of Calgarian Gregory Roberts’ debut YA novel with baseball slang. It’s such an integral part of his story that each chapter begins with a relevant ... Read More »

May 30, 2007 | Filed under: Book news