Reviews

The Weather Inside

Indoors or out, actual or perceived, the weather in Emily Saso’s assured debut novel tends toward the weird and tumultuous. Set in a contemporary but unappealing Toronto – “a place bloated with condo developments and ... Read More »

December 21, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Such a Lovely Little War

By Marcelino Truong; David Homel (trans.)

History may be written by the winners, but it’s often drawn by whomever is able to wield a pen. Cartooning and graphic memoirs like Maus and Persepolis have been able to deliver particularly subversive takes ... Read More »

December 15, 2016 | Filed under: Graphica

Truth and Honour: The Death of Richard Oland and the Trial of Dennis Oland

By Greg Marquis

Dennis Oland was perceived as a mild-mannered family man of good character. Then, on Dec. 19, 2015, he was convicted of butchering his father, Richard Oland, a millionaire businessman and part of the family that ... Read More »

December 15, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Gambling with Fire

By David Montrose

The term “Canadian noir” sounds almost oxymoronic – as a concept, it runs contrary to both our complacently benign self-image and our international reputation as wholesome, apologetic, and frostbitten. The strange difficulty of convincing ourselves ... Read More »

December 15, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You

By Adèle Barclay

Kate Sutherland’s How to Draw a Rhinoceros is a curious little book, presenting a series of poems about rhinoceroses with a focus on their commodification as spectacle over the course of western colonial history. The ... Read More »

December 12, 2016 | Filed under: Poetry

A Number of Things: Stories of Canada Told Through Fifty Objects

By Jane Urquhart‚ Scott McKowen (ill.)

Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017 no doubt will prompt much soul-searching around the subject of how to define our country. Is it easier or harder, 150 years after Confederation, to explain who we are? And how ... Read More »

December 12, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reference

Hag-Seed

By Margaret Atwood

Any act of artistic performance shares a close affinity with magic. Stephen King has made this connection in numerous essays, forewords, and introductions to his own work, and in his recent memoir, Bruce Springsteen refers ... Read More »

December 12, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Holy Rule

By Mary Frances Coady

With Holy Rule, Mary Frances Coady revisits the cloistered Catholic world she explored in her 2009 short-story collection, The Practice of Perfection. Those stories followed a group of novitiates taking their first steps toward becoming ... Read More »

December 12, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Desolate Splendor

By John Jantunen

It may have become too easy to invoke the name Cormac McCarthy when discussing a certain strain of contemporary fiction, but when the shoe fits so snugly, such comparisons are unavoidable. John Jantunen’s second novel ... Read More »

December 8, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels