Chump Change

This is a funny book, though it may fetch bigger laughs than mine from the generation whose idiom it speaks and whose purported ennui it celebrates. Chump Change is a coming-of-age novel with a hero ... Read More »

March 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Kerouac’s Ghost

By Ken McGoogan

Back in 1993, Ken McGoogan, literary editor of the Calgary Herald, published a novel called Visions of Kerouac. This was an ebullient, unapologetically Kerouac-obsessed coming-of-age story. Its hero and main narrator, Frankie McCracken, was a ... Read More »

March 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Alias Grace

By Margaret Atwood

A new novel by Margaret Atwood will sell, and be discussed, regardless of its critical reception and, one suspects, largely regardless of the book itself. Such are the wages of fame. And while I am ... Read More »

March 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Oyster

By Janette Turner Hospital

A world both sear and voluptuous, dark and light, harsh and merciful – that’s the terrain of Australian-born Ontario writer Janette Turner Hospital’s new novel, Oyster. Set in the Queensland, Australia outback in a kind ... Read More »

March 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Affordable Bed & Breakfasts in Quebec 96-97

If judging a book by its cover were an adequate method of evaluation, the Affordable Bed & Breakfasts in Quebec 96-97 guide would take only a moment to select. Gracing its jacket is a photograph ... Read More »

March 12, 2004 | Filed under: Reference

Spartacus: International Gay Guide ’96–97

By Bruno Gmünder

A.Y.O.R. – “At Your Own Risk.” That was my favourite of the many codes provided by early gay travel guides. It marked, for the alert homo tourist, situations both sexually tantalizing and sinister. It always ... Read More »

March 12, 2004 | Filed under: Reference