Reviews

A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard

By Blanche Howard and Allison Howard, eds

Carol Shields and Blanche Howard were friends for 30 years, starting in the early 1970s, despite a 12-year gap in age (Shields being the younger). Both were writers and feminists with strong marriages and large ... Read More »

April 9, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Chainsaws: A History

By David Lee

Odds are this is the first time the chainsaw and the coffee table book have been combined. That pairing’s not a bad thing. And neither is this book. Given the chainsaw’s importance in helping to ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad

By Karolyn Smardz Frost

There have been many books written about the plight of slaves fleeing to Canada prior to the American civil war. In I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, Toronto-born archaeologist Karolyn Smardz Frost has chosen ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Iced: Crystal Meth – The Biography of North America’s Deadliest New Plague

By Jerry Langton

Toward the end of Iced, journalist and author Jerry Langton writes that the drug methamphetamine, aka “meth,” has divided the North American media into two camps: “Those who believe meth is bad, dangerous and rapidly ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Jesus of Hollywood

By Adele Reinhartz

It’s tempting to praise University of Ottawa professor Adele Reinhartz’s Jesus of Hollywood, an evenhanded and thorough survey of representations of Jesus in popular cinema, simply for all the ways it doesn’t go wrong. In ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction

By Herb Wyile

In Speaking in the Past Tense, Herb Wyile interviews 11 Canadian novelists about writing historical fiction. Several recurring topics weave through the informal, conversational interviews, but the predominating theme is that of the tension between ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Free Speech in Fearful Times: After 9/11 in Canada, the U.S., Australia and Europe

By James Turk and Allan Manson, eds.

Free Speech in Fearful Times is an accessible, must-read anthology for those concerned about the current state of civil liberties in the West. Despite the seemingly limited focus of its subtitle, the collection is in ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush

By Barry M. Lando

In the final days of 1920, after a series of bloody Arab uprisings against the British occupiers of Mesopotamia (soon to be renamed Iraq), a frustrated Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colonies, ... Read More »

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, History

Yesno

By Dennis Lee

UN, Dennis Lee’s previous collection of poetry for adults, represented a significant stylistic departure not only for Lee but for English Canadian poetry in general. Unlike the long, often prosy lines of Civil Elegies, a ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Poetry

The Breakdown So Far

By M.A.C. Farrant

This collection of (very) short stories and literary snapshots is billed as “an unsparing critique” of North American mall culture. It is unsparing. It’s also sometimes witty and clever. Unfortunately, it’s often so busy sneering ... Read More »

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short

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