Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Blood and Salt

By Barbara Sapergia

The life-affirming power of storytelling is central to Barbara Sapergia’s fourth novel, a revealing saga based on historical events involving the internment of Ukrainian-Canadian immigrants during the First World War. The year is 1914 and, ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Harem

By Safia Fazlul

Farina is the deeply cynical and unhappy daughter of Bangladeshi parents. Living in a Muslim ghetto in a large Canadian city, she eschews university and instead gets a full-time deli job to fund her independence. ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Cosmo

By Spencer Gordon

The word “spiritual” appears in each of the first three stories in Spencer Gordon’s debut collection, an appropriate marker for a book that traffics so resolutely in the existential malaise of our pop-culture-saturated world. Gordon’s ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Hockey Girl

By Natalie Hyde

At what should be the height of the NHL season, two Canadian publishers have released young adult books aimed at girls who love “Canada’s game.” Although both novels are sure to capture the imagination of ... Read More »

January 2, 2013 | Filed under: Book links

Breakaway

By Maureen Ulrich

At what should be the height of the NHL season, two Canadian publishers have released young adult books aimed at girls who love “Canada’s game.” Although both novels are sure to capture the imagination of ... Read More »

January 2, 2013

Deviants

By Maureen McGowan

In Maureen McGowan’s suspenseful post-apocalyptic novel, 16-year-old Glory is dedicated to looking after her younger brother, Drake, in the city of Haven, a bleak, government-controlled place reminiscent of a cross between the domed arena and ... Read More »

January 2, 2013

Nix Minus One

By Jill MacLean

Novels written in verse are difficult to execute well. On one hand they have a tendency toward melodrama; on the other they showcase poetry’s inherent ability to communicate flashes of thought, emotion, and experience. For ... Read More »

January 2, 2013