Quill and Quire

Reviews

A Free Man

By Michel Basilières

Admirers of Michel Basilières’ Black Bird, which won the 2003 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, have been waiting for a follow-up for more than a decade. Apparently, it’s not coming. According to a throwaway ... Read More »

April 14, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Against a Darkening Sky

By Lauren B. Davis

Lauren B. Davis’s latest novel transports its reader back to seventh-century England, where widespread belief in superstitions, spirits, and gods galore collides with the birth of Christianity. In her acknowledgments, the author likens her imaginative ... Read More »

April 14, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

When the Saints

By Sarah Mian

Sarah Mian is a true storyteller – a poet and short-story writer, the Nova Scotia–based author is also a fixture on CBC Radio’s Definitely Not the Opera. She certainly knows how to spin a good ... Read More »

April 14, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Boo

By Neil Smith

As a child in Illinois, Oliver is nicknamed Boo because of his ghostly, albino-like pallor. We meet Oliver in a branch of heaven known as Town, where all the inhabitants have died at age 13. ... Read More »

April 14, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

the pet radish, shrunken

By Pearl Pirie

In her third poetry collection, Ottawa’s Pearl Pirie unleashes her deep curiosity about language. Writing on the BookThug blog, Pirie claims, “I like when the words in words are not the root word but are ... Read More »

April 6, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry