★ Hunger’s Brides

By the midway point of Hunger’s Brides’ almost 1,400 pages, the suspense is starting to build, not merely at a narrative level – what are the dark secrets of poet Sor Juana’s childhood? how will ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Snowbird Poems

By Robert Kroetsch

Robert Kroetsch has deservedly earned a reputation as one of the leading writers of what, for lack of a better term, has been called Canadian postmodernism. Kroetsch’s self-reflexive narration is well in evidence in his ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Night Street Repairs

By A.F. Moritz

In his 16th poetry collection, A.F. Moritz shows how master wordsmiths ply their trade. The poems in Night Street Repairs stand firm as pillars of accessible poetry rooted in the qualified skill of a veteran ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: Poetry

Names of the Dead: An Elegy for the Victims of September 11

By Diane Schoemperlen

Surely no one would dispute that real-life tragedy can spark transcendent art. But that blithe generalization gets put to the test in Diane Schoemperlen’s new book-length essay, Names of the Dead: An Elegy for the ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Footprints: Canadian Sports Stories: Summer

By Dave Toms

Footprints, by filmmaker and first-time writer Dave Toms of Peterborough, Ontario, focuses on summer sports and award-winners, presenting short four-page profiles of 50 Canadian athletes, one-third of them female.Arranged chronologically, the achievements of athletes span ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help

One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema

By George Melnyk

To casual observers, Canadian film must seem like an almost newborn art, with the country’s internationally acclaimed filmmakers – Egoyan, Cronenberg, Lepage, Arcand – all having emerged since the 1960s.Of course, this isn’t the case. ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: History

Story-Wallah!: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction

By Shyam Selvadurai, ed.

It’s a shame the word “diaspora” isn’t more commonly used. Because as Sri-Lankan born Toronto novelist Shyam Selvadurai points out in his excellent introduction, diaspora – with its adjective “diasporic,” both from the Greek for ... Read More »

September 14, 2004 | Filed under: Anthologies

Pearls in Vinegar: The Pillow Book of Heather Mallick

By Heather Mallick

Some journalists’ writing, charming in brevity, suffers when translated to a full-length book. So readers of Heather Mallick’s Globe and Mail columns may approach Pearls in Vinegar with some trepidation. Fortunately, Mallick has resisted the ... Read More »

September 10, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Going to New Orleans

By Charles Tidler

Like a jazzy riff on old standards by William S. Burroughs and Nelson Algren comes Charles Tidler’s debut novel, Going to New Orleans. Tidler, who makes his home in Victoria, is best known as a ... Read More »

September 10, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

This Body

By Tessa McWatt

"How does it feel to be an echo?” is the question that both drives and thwarts Victoria Blayne, the protagonist of Tessa McWatt’s third novel. This Body is a story of self-reckoning, an exploration of ... Read More »