Reviews

★ Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist

A good biography is like a dollhouse, the kind where you can swing open one side and see the rooms in a sort of cross-section. You can lean back and see how the thing works ... Read More »

November 14, 2023 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

By the Ghost Light: Wars, Memory, and Families

By R.H. Thomson

What insights emerge when we linger by the ghost light? Whose stories impress us with their significance, and whose spirits speak to us? These are questions that Canadian actor and playwright R.H. Thomson extends to ... Read More »

November 8, 2023 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Are You Willing to Die for the Cause?

By Chris Oliveros

In the first of a planned two-volume graphic history of the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec), Chris Oliveros, cartoonist and founder of renowned publishing house Drawn & Quarterly, brings to life the many personalities whose ... Read More »

November 8, 2023 | Filed under: Graphica, History, Reviews

Sleep is Now a Foreign Country: Encounters with the Uncanny

By Mike Barnes

The challenge of a memoir is to captivate the reader through a narrative form that matches function. Sleep is Now a Foreign Country: Encounters with the Uncanny is a shape-shifting account speckled with ghost marks ... Read More »

November 1, 2023 | Filed under: Health & Self-help, Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Gendered Islamophobia: My Journey With a Scar(f)

By Monia Mazigh

There’s something about Monia Mazigh’s Gendered Islamophobia that is reminiscent of texts such as The Communist Manifesto and Witches, Midwives, and Nurses. These works – short and to the point – were intended by their ... Read More »

November 1, 2023 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs, Race & Ethnic Relations

Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth

By Claire Horn

Most people who have experienced pregnancy have likely at some point had a thought, however fleeting, that they wish someone – or something – else could take over for a while and grow their ... Read More »

October 25, 2023 | Filed under: History, Reviews, Science, Technology & Environment

Nights Too Short to Dance

By Marie-Claire Blais; Katia Grubisic (trans.)

Marie-Claire Blais first appeared on the literary landscape fully formed at the age of 20; her debut, La Belle Bête (translated into English as Mad Shadows), caused a furor in her home province of Quebec. ... Read More »

October 18, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Canada’s Greatest Spy

By Jason Bell

In Cracking the Nazi Code, University of New Brunswick professor Jason Bell describes how Canadian Winthrop Bell (no relation) tried to warn the world about the rise of far-right extremism in Germany after the First ... Read More »

October 18, 2023 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Not Here: Why American Democracy Is Eroding and How Canada Can Protect Itself

By Rob Goodman

Every Canadian knows the analogy about living next door to the United States: “like sleeping with an elephant,” we are “affected by every twitch and grunt.” The analogy may be well-worn, but the challenge of ... Read More »

October 11, 2023 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews