Reviews

★ Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril

“We’re doomed.” Thomas Homer-Dixon, a university research chair in the faculty of environment at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C., has been ... Read More »

September 14, 2020 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews

Happy Hour

By Marlowe Granados

Isa Epley wants to learn as much as she can about the world. Sophisticated, adventurous, and somewhat weary, she sees things with a perspective fresher than most. Her meticulously kept diary is littered with thoughtful ... Read More »

September 10, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ The Night Piece: Collected Short Fiction

By André Alexis

The epigraph to André Alexis’s novella, “A,” first published in 2013, is by Margaret Laurence: “Then things become all at once strange.” It’s a fitting sentiment given Alexis’s penchant to allow his fiction to drift ... Read More »

September 3, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews

★ Take Back the Fight: Organizing Feminism for the Digital Age

By Nora Loreto

In Take Back the Fight, Quebec City writer and podcaster Nora Loreto has crafted a meticulous look at how we can address barriers in contemporary Canadian feminist organizing. She defines her feminist framework as one ... Read More »

September 3, 2020 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews

★ Changing the Face of Canadian Literature: A Diverse Canadian Anthology

By Dane Swan (ed.)

Editor Dane Swan concludes the introduction to this new anthology of poetry and essays by saying, “Congratulations Canada, you finally have a literature that looks like the people who inhabit you. Do not take this ... Read More »

August 31, 2020 | Filed under: Anthologies, Reviews

Crosshairs

By Catherine Hernandez

In Crosshairs, the second novel by Toronto writer and playwright Catherine Hernandez, the distinction between dystopia and reality becomes increasingly imperceptible. Hernandez presents the disintegration of Canada into a bifurcated society of haves and have-nots, ... Read More »

August 31, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies

By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

The new book by the multi-talented Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg of Alderville First Nation) is a novel of Anishinaabe aesthetics cast in prose and poetic fragments. It presses readers – Indigenous and settler ... Read More »

August 27, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Taken by the Muse: On the Path to Becoming a Filmmaker

By Anne Wheeler

There’s a chatty intimacy to Taken by the Muse, a series of vignettes focusing on adventures Canadian filmmaker Anne Wheeler has embarked on in her life. Wheeler, whose critically acclaimed career includes the feature films ... Read More »

August 24, 2020 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture, Reviews

★ Brighten the Corner Where You Are

By Carol Bruneau

Maud Lewis did not set out to become Nova Scotia’s most famous folk artist, but the rise of her profile did coincide with the province’s efforts to market an idyllic image to the rest of ... Read More »

August 24, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews