Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness

In Bitter Medicine, award-winning playwright Clem Martini chronicles his family’s 30-year struggle with schizophrenia, and in so doing reveals a deeply flawed Canadian health care system. Clem’s perspective on the suffering that has plagued those ... Read More »

February 22, 2010 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

A Place Within: Rediscovering India

By M.G. Vassanji

How often does a reader have the chance to glimpse a writer’s mind at work? M.G. Vassanji allows just that and more in A Place Within, an intensely personal meditation on history and identity that ... Read More »

February 16, 2010 | Filed under: History

Cool Water

By Dianne Warren

The publicity bumpf for Dianne Warren’s first novel compares it to the work of Carol Shields and Miriam Toews, but Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is its true kindred spirit. Set in the fictional prairie hamlet ... Read More »

February 16, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude

By Emily White

In recent years, the memoir has shifted from the tell-all to the personal essay, and from there it has branched out into various forms of creative non-fiction: often beautiful me-centered takes on some aspect of ... Read More »

February 1, 2010 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ The Heart Does Break: Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning

By George Bowering and Jean Baird, eds.

The Heart Does Break was born of paralyzing grief: Jean Baird, struggling with the sudden death of her daughter, Bronwyn, consulted counsellors and psychologists to help her deal with her loss, but found her greatest ... Read More »

January 25, 2010 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

No Place Fit for a Child

By Wade Bell

Alberta-based former oilman Wade Bell crafts vivid emotional and geographic terrains in his latest short-fiction collection, No Place Fit for a Child. The seeming permanence of nature in the face of human failings is a ... Read More »

January 18, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

The Sea Captain’s Wife

By Beth Powning

Beth Powning’s second novel is the affecting and engaging story of a young woman seeking her place in the world – a place away from the loneliness and boredom of a small Canadian village. Azuba ... Read More »

January 11, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Could Be

By Heather Cadsby

Could Be is an excellent title for Toronto-based poet Heather Cadsby’s fourth book of poems. Driven by the vocabulary of dreams and the sleep-sense of a somnambulist, Cadsby walks the reader through looming tragedies, misunderstandings, ... Read More »

January 4, 2010 | Filed under: Poetry

Automaton Biographies

By Larissa Lai

The words “four eyes” on the dedication page of Larissa Lai’s first full-length poetry collection telegraph her intentions. Comprising four long, complementary poems, Automaton Biographies reckons with matters of identity and questions what it is ... Read More »

January 4, 2010 | Filed under: Poetry

I Am Here and Not Not-There

By Margaret Avison

A high-school teacher once told a young Margaret Avison to eschew the first person singular in her writing for 10 years. It was a directive the naturally withdrawn Avison readily took to heart. Nevertheless, the ... Read More »

January 4, 2010 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

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