Reviews

Accelerated Paces: Travels Across Borders and Other Imaginary Boundaries

Long before Oprah publicly eviscerated James Frey for exaggerating aspects of his biography, another notorious writer regularly employed hyperbole, embellishment, and outright lies in his “non-fiction” work. It takes Vancouver-based author Jim Oaten 162 pages ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Welcome to the Departure Lounge: Adventures in Mothering Mother

By Meg Federico

When writing about the grinding grief of Alzheimer’s victims and their families, it can be difficult to resist the easy path of self-pitying confessional or diatribe about the many shortcomings of geriatric care, but author ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships

By Erika Ritter

Human nature is a mass of contradiction and ambiguity. We hurt what we profess to love, we kill with kindness, and we deny any culpability. Almost nothing exemplifies our contradictory nature like our relationship with ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Science, Technology & Environment

Confession

By Lee Gowan

Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, that oft-quoted paragon of unreliable narrators, said you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. It’s an absurd statement, of course, as any parole officer or criminal psychologist ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels

Valley of the Lost

By Vicki Delany

The small town of Trafalgar, B.C., seems far more suited to quiet vacations than murder, but the detective duo of Constable Molly Smith and Sergeant John Winters know better. Their debut, In the Shadow of ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels

Fierce

By Hannah Holborn

Hannah Holborn’s short stories, often set in the north or in rural Canada, depict bleak landscapes peopled by the emotionally dispossessed. These characters are, without exception, damaged goods: families ripped apart by alcohol, affairs, resentments, ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

To Whom It May Concern

By Priscila Uppal

The task of defining, even in the broadest terms, the protean postmodern self has bedevilled artists for decades. What does it mean to be an individual in a society uprooted from the certainties of family ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Apologize, Apologize!

By Elizabeth Kelly

There’s a scattered, unsettling feeling to journalist and magazine editor Elizabeth Kelly’s first novel. Maybe it’s the seemingly endless jumble of canines constantly getting underfoot. Maybe it’s the way the narrator, Collie Flanagan, darts like ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels

The Extraordinary Event of Pia H.

By Nicola Vulpe

The Extraordinary Event of Pia H. is superficially a tale of a wife gone missing from a Spanish plaza – miraculously vanished into thin air, if two elderly doñas are to be believed – and ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

One Careless Moment

By Dave Hugelschaffer

When fighting wildfires, one moment can lead to tragedy. When arson enters the equation, tragedy can turn into murder. One Careless Moment is the second of Dave Hugelschaffer’s Porter Cassel mysteries. As the novel opens, ... Read More »

January 19, 2009 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels

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