Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Bread, Wine & Angels

By Anna P. Zurzolo

Where more grandiose novelists might place epigraphs from Tolstoy or Flaubert at the beginning of each chapter, Anna Paletta Zurzolo has inserted recipes. And to deflate fiction’s pomposities even more, her instructions are written just ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Lion of Venice

By Mark Frutkin

Past-Governor-General’s-Award nominee Mark Frutkin’s The Lion of Venice is a hybrid of a fictionalized biography of Marco Polo and his travels to the East, and poetic introspective writing that evokes the atmosphere of 13th-century Venice, ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Jacob’s Ladder

By Joel Yanofsky

“Man plans and God laughs,” goes an old saying. Who hasn’t considered this existential Catch-22 at one time or another? In Jacob’s Ladder, an entertaining first novel by Montreal journalist Joel Yanofsky, each character is ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Aurora Montrealis

By Monique Proulx

When Aurora Montrealis first appeared a year ago, francophone readers embraced its multi-faceted reflection of post-referendum Quebec. A superb translation by Matt Cohen now allows anglophones to step through the looking glass to marvel, “Why, ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short