Song of Ascent

After the literature of the Holocaust comes the literature of the Holocaust’s children. Spared the immediate horrors of the Second World War, they are left with the more subtle task of witnessing the witnesses – ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

A Cargo of Orchids

By Susan Musgrave

Susan Musgrave’s first novel in over 10 years has everything her readers might expect from her: rich, lyrical language, bizarre imagery, and an intimate familiarity with the state-sanctioned indignities inflicted on prison inmates. Musgrave’s anonymous ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

By a Frozen River: The Short Stories of Norman Levine

By Norman Levine

Norman Levine’s short stories enjoy a higher reputation in Europe than in Canada, perhaps because Levine’s craft is too quietly impressionistic, too expertly minimalistic for some home-grown readers. By a Frozen River, a collection of ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Only a Lower Paradise and Other Stories

By Michael Bryson

It’s not often that a short story collection makes you want to reread William Blake, but Michael Bryson’s Only a Lower Paradise does just that. While Blake presides over the entire work, it is in ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

A Fit Month for Dying

By M.T. Dohaney

From page one, A Fit Month for Dying, the final novel in a trilogy chronicling the trials of the Corrigan family, promises heartbreak. “Sooner or later life’ll break the heart of ye,” warns Bertha Corrigan, ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels

Charisma

By Margaret Christakos

How do you like your sex? In Charisma, first-time novelist Margaret Christakos fills the pages with detailed and rather poetic descriptions of sex between women and women, men and women, men and men – with ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall

By Ken Sparling

Ken Sparling, a Toronto writer in his mid-thirties and fiction editor at Gutter Press has written a quirky anti-novel that both engages and frustrates the reader. In Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall, ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Fair Weather

By Joe Matt

Joe Matt’s autobiographical Peepshow was part of a wave of groundbreaking North American alternative comics in the early 1990s. Matt’s unflinching and unflattering portrayal of every sordid corner of his Catholic-guilt-ridden psyche earned him a ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Martina Hingis: Teen Tennis Sensation (Champion Sports Biography Series)

By Bev Spencer

There’s nothing like a good sports biography to get a fan’s blood pumping. A well-written account of the sporting life can prompt fond reminiscences of one’s own athletic past, call up daydreams where you’re the ... Read More »

February 16, 2004 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help