Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Mr. & Mrs. Gg

By Frank Davey

Writer, poet, and professor Frank Davey puts Canada’s Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson, and her husband, novelist and philosopher John Ralston Saul, under the microscope in the economical, occasionally snippy, but smartly argued Mr. & Mrs. ... Read More »

November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Alms

By Cynthia MacDonald

Alms is set in the 1980s in Toronto. Its sad-sack protagonist, Martine Craythorn, describes her people as “the late-century rich – back-patters and horse-laughers.” In an age of ambition and acquisition, Martine is obsessed only ... Read More »

November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Universal Recipients

By Dana Bath

What if short story authors were forbidden to create characters – particularly women – who cannot get over themselves? And what if there was an embargo on finely crafted little tales of anxiousness, dread, chill, ... Read More »

November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Careful

By Jacqueline Turner

Careful, Jacqueline Turner’s second poetry collection, is partitioned into nine sections, most of which feature short-line, lower-case poems that form lexical stalactites creeping down the left-hand margin of the page. As random words percolate, the ... Read More »

November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Poetry

The Alchemy of Happiness

By Marilyn Bowering

Alchemy. The word conjures images of medieval laboratories, of quasi-magical transformations, and, perhaps most importantly, of failure. For despite their many important contributions to modern science, the medieval alchemists ultimately failed in their primary goal: ... Read More »

November 20, 2003 | Filed under: Poetry