| Book Review A Review of: Sunday Afternoon
by W.P.Kinsella
>From the same geographical area that has produced Sandra Birdsell and
Armin Wiebe, David Elias, author of two acclaimed story collections,
Places of Grace, and Crossing the Line, gives us a humorous and
profound look at a Sunday afternoon in the small southern Manitoba
Mennonite Community of Neustadt. It is the time of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, and just across the American border the US Military is burying
Minuteman Missiles in preparation for a possible Armageddon. What
precipitates the action is the return of a stranger, a gorgeous blonde
in a yellow convertible with california plates. She is Katie Klassen,
...
Read more...
|  | Skinny
by Ibi Kaslik
Harper Collins Canada $19.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0002005077
|
Book Review A Review of: Skinny
by W.P.Kinsella
Most of the first novels I've read so far have been disappointing in
various degrees. Most writers have not been able to sustain voice,
story, plot and characterization. There have been few surprises. Until
now the WOW factor has been minimal. However, with a big cherry
popsicle on the remarkable cover (designed by Greg Tabor) this novel
is like a beautiful dew-bedecked rose growing out of a briar patch. At
the beginning, Giselle Vasco is 21, and a functioning anorexic, taking
a leave from medical school to get her life back together. The
epigraph, from Cathy Caruth really sums up the essence of the novel:
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Intimations of a Realm in Jeopardy
by Michael Greenstein
Montreal poet Norm Sibum's narrative poems are not everyone's cup of
tea; they are, rather, bottles of wine that have been sitting in
cellars, collecting the dust of meaning and growing in complexity and
peril. His characters and situations are reminiscent of Robert
Browning's, but instead of breathing air they exhale and inhale the
exhaust of apocalyptic times. This can be seen in the intriguing
vagueness of Norm Sibum's title, Intimations of a Realm in Jeopardy,
which, in turn, is re-enacted in each of the twelve long, lyrical,
impressionistic poems in this latest collection.
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Mortal Arguments
by Brian Bartlett
When Emerson writes-in one of his greatest essays, "Experience", from
1844-"I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I
am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me," he's talking in part
about his own essay, his own art. "Like a bird which alights
anywhere," he continues, trying out another metaphor, "but hops
perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no man
and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for
another moment from that one.". . .
When Emerson's "power" alights on the bough of Sinclair's poetry, it's
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Daybreak at the Straits and Other Poems
by Brian Bartlett
When Emerson writes-in one of his greatest essays, "Experience", from
1844-"I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I
am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me," he's talking in part
about his own essay, his own art. "Like a bird which alights
anywhere," he continues, trying out another metaphor, "but hops
perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no man
and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for
another moment from that one."
What Emerson says above might apply to the vast array of poets we can
...
Read more...
|  | A Lover's Quarrel
by Carmine Starnino
Porcupine's Quill $24.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0889842418
|
Book Review A Review of: A LoverÆs Quarrel
by Asa Boxer
Opposition, we too often forget, is an important component of
democratic fair play. William Blake went so far as to proclaim that
"Opposition is true Friendship." The title of Montreal poet Carmine
Starnino's book of selected essays and reviews, A Lover's Quarrel,
bespeaks his desire to confront the establishment with serious dissent
(for its own good, of course). Starnino takes such a hard line because
he wants to provoke debate. In fact, he practically pleads for a
rejoinder in his Introduction, and does so not to pursue a "scheme for
victory", but in the hope that "a fair and open fight will produce, in
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: With English Subtitles
by Asa Boxer
Read Starnino's A Lover's Quarrel and chew on it awhile; Starnino's
style is all taste and sprezzatura. His explanations are so absolutely
accessible and lucid that one cannot but give credit to the sharpness
of his reasoning. His subtle way with distinctions is remarkable: "An
influence exists," Starnino explains, "as a called-forth effect; it is
born in contact with a mind, but has no existence as an independent
intention. And this is precisely why it's wrong to treat evidence of
indebtedness as evidence of living under enemy control." The precision
of these two sentences, and Starnino's clear-headedness, is what sets
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Inventing Sam Slick
by George Fetherling
Over the years, a great deal of research has been done on Thomas
Chandler Haliburton, the Nova Scotian who wrote The Clockmaker and a
stack of subsequent books about Sam Slick, his fictional Yankee
peddler. Haliburton criticism has been even more voluminous. Until
now, however, there's never been a proper life of this important early
Canadian author. That's the argument in favour of Inventing Sam Slick:
A Biography of Richard Chandler Haliburton (University of Toronto
Press, $60) by Richard A. Davies of Acadia University. Among its
assets are thoroughness, rich historical context, and the kind of even
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: On the Front Line of Life: Stephen Leacock, Selected Essays
by George Fetherling
The New York Review of Books publishes a series of books called NYRB
Classics whose purpose is to revive certain texts-well not classics
exactly, but cult favourites-with new introductions. Seeing what the
many different series of this type do and do not include always gives
interesting insight into what certain generations and cultures value.
For example, one of the new NYRB Classics (and one of the few in
hardcover-Raincoast Books, $22.95) is Leacock's Nonsense Novels, a
book that's still familiar, possibly even a trifle too familiar, to
students of Canadiana but evidently carries no schoolroom echoes for
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Living the Low Carb Life
by Greg Gatenby
If, like me, your hobbies include trying to lose weight, you will have
read, oh, at least a thousand diet books a year in the ongoing attempt
to learn how to curtail cravings, consume the right mixture of
proteins, calories, and carbohydrates, and still find a sneaky method
for occasional culinary indulgences of chocolate and other creations
of the Devil. A large part of the problem is sticking to just one diet
for any meaningful length of time, especially if you live or work
downtown where the pressures (the excuses?) to cheat or be lax are
everywhere. But another problem is the mass of conflicting data hurled
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: The Wire: Truth Be Told
by Greg Gatenby
Thinking people are fond of trashing television as an intellectual
wasteland, although it has been my observation that book people are
rather too conversant with the details of several shows which their
trashing (and claims to never watch) should in principle prohibit them
from knowing. One of the programs I found that book people rarely if
ever watched was Imprint, a show that started so well years ago under
Daniel Richler's aegis but which devolved into an embarrassment to the
book trade-indeed, was an embarrassment to the human mind, so confused
was its mission, and so appallingly priggish was its hosting. Yet for
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: The Great Dominion: Winston Churchill in Canada, 1900-1954
by Greg Gatenby
Finally, a long-overdue book has been handsomely published by Thomas
Allen: a documentation of Churchill's relationship to Canada. The
author, David Dilks, a Briton who has travelled many times to this
country, has given us not only the obvious but necessary, a record of
Churchill's visits to what he called The Great Dominion. The surprise,
and it is this which raises the book well above the ordinary, is the
richness of the telling, for Dilks quotes from the diaries and
journals of Mackenzie King, from Churchill's private doctor, and from
anyone who has something pertinent to say about the great war leader's
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Getting to First Base With Danalda Chase
by Wayne Cunningham
Toronto author Matt Beam's debut novel centres on seventh grader Darcy
Spillman's attempts to connect getting to first base in baseball with
getting to first base with Danalda Chase, simultaneously the hottest
and coolest girl at Cherrydale Junior High. But while he knows all
about baseball- balls, strikes, fouls, fielders' choices, balks,
grounders and home field advantage-he knows diddley about girls and
how to get along with them.
His baseball-obsessed but athletically inept best friend Dwight isn't
much help with the girls, and his other best friend Ralph has shied
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: The Valley of Secrets
by Antony Di Nardo
Ever start reading a novel and the first few chapters really draw you
in, urge you to go on, but then the rest of the book falls flat and
disappoints? If you haven't, try reading Charmian Hussey's The Valley
of Secrets, and you'll see what I mean.
You'll find the first three chapters compelling, offering a fanciful
caricature of an English town replete with rural atmosphere and even a
quirky postman. There's the promise of a ripping tale about to be told
by a narrator with an eye for detail and an ear for that long,
descriptive sentence, centuries old in style, that conjures gardens
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Still There, Clare
by Tim McGrenere
I am not part of the target audience for this book. I cannot directly
relate to a young woman's angst over the unpunctual development of her
breasts; nor did I ever have a crush on my gym teacher. Still, I did
enjoy reading Yvonne Prinz's first novel told from the point of view
of 12-year-old Clare. She is a sassy outsider with a sharp tongue and,
for me, an enjoyable guide to the perplexing mind of a female
pre-teen.
Clare is on the cusp of womanhood as we enter her world. In the
opening chapter she reveals that it is time for a few changes in her
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: The Librarian of Basra
by Olga Stein
This is a marvelous book in more respects than one. The story is
simple, but the subject matter and the quality of the
illustrations-capturing as they do the profoundest of human
emotions-moved me practically to tears. Based on actual events, the
book depicts the brave efforts of Alia Muhammad Baker, chief librarian
of the central library in Iraq's city of Basra. It is April 2003, and
as the war to liberate Iraq is about to reach her city, Alia fears for
the 30,000 books in her care. The library, formerly a refuge for
Basrans who enjoy reading and discussing books, has itself become
...
Read more...
|  | Some Great Thing
by Colin Mcadam
Raincoast Books $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1551926954
|
Book Review A Review of: Some Great Thing
by W.P.Kinsella
Some Great Thing is an ambitious novel. Two men live parallel lives
until they eventually intersect. Jerry McGuinty is a working-class
young man with grand dreams and the smarts to bring them to fruition.
It is the 1970s and Ottawa is having a building boom, and Jerry
becomes successful and wealthy by building quality houses. His
difficulties stem from meeting and marrying a spirited Irish caterer
named Kathleen Herlihy, who proves to be rancorous and even at a young
age has an inordinate thirst for whiskey. They have a son, Jerry Jr.,
and the final third of the book is about Jerry Sr. trying to reconnect
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: WhatÆs Remembered
by W.P.Kinsella
What's Remembered is graced with a beautiful cover designed by Tannis
Goddard. More a fictional memoir than a novel, the story opens with
two gay men meeting at a gallery opening and going out for a late
supper. The older man tells the younger one his life story, describing
his childhood in a repressed home with a silent, brooding clergyman
father, and his falling in love with a man who does not return his
affection while at Oxford. Peter, probably no pun intended, teaches at
a second-rate Canadian university where he is seduced by a student and
they have a wild, necessarily secret affair, until the student,
...
Read more...
|  | Bishop's Road
by Catherine Safer
Creative Book Publishing $19.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1894294785
|
Book Review A Review of: Bishops Road
by W.P.Kinsella
Bishops Road is a keeper. It has the lovable characters of Maeve
Binchy, the magic realism of Alice Hoffman, combined with the
insightful quirkiness of Anne Tyler. The setting is St.John's, NF,
where a Mrs. Miflin operates a rooming house that was a former
convent. The author says of the former tenants, "...the holy women
confused several generations of youngsters for a hundred years or more
until they all just dried up and blew away." This sets the tone for
events to come. The roomers, all women, are a strange and miraculous
lot. Ginny Mustard is a black teenager with yellow hair (hence the
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Saturday
by Matt Sturrock
Even among the top-tiered English-language novelists, Ian McEwan holds
a privileged spot. His books have attracted the consistently large
readership that, say, the beautiful but remote mandarinisms of John
Banville and Don DeLillo have not. He's been much more productive than
careful wordsmith Marilynne Robinson and avoided the missteps of the
more creatively incautious Martin Amis. In fact, his past writing has
been almost critically unimpeachable, and among members of his
generation, perhaps only J.M. Coetzee and Peter Carey have been the
beneficiaries of equal award-committee largesse. (Indeed, McEwan was
...
Read more...
|  | Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Knopf Canada $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0676977103
|
Book Review A Review of: Never Let Me Go
by Michael Harris
The year was 1997 and the stage was England. Over three decades of
biotechnological research culminated in the birth of the world's first
clone, Dolly the sheep. Her test-tube creation spurred worrisome
speculations about "designer babies", "the gay gene", and the
possibility of human clones. But while the world wrung its hands,
Dolly stared at television cameras, chewed her cud, and remained
nonplussed.
Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, Never Let Me Go, is set conspicuously in
"England, late 1990s" and spins a counter-factual history wherein our
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Life Mask
by Nancy Wigston
Irish writer Emma Donoghue's sixth work of fiction, the wonderfully
erudite and sensual novel, Life Mask, takes place in late 18th century
London. Donoghue beautifully captures this exuberant era that, if
anything, surpasses our own in the scope of its ambition, its lively
and dangerous politics, its shameless materialism. If clothes make the
man (or woman), nowhere was this saying more true than in Georgian
London. >From the first scene, when a nervous young beauty arrives at
a grand house, her outfit accessorized by a muff so large it could be
mistaken for "a fluffy, bloated dog squatting on her lap" (she is
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Emotions in Finance:Distrust and Uncertainty in Global Markets
by Christopher Ondaatje
Jocelyn Pixley's slender volume Emotions in Finance states in its
opening paragraph that "money is based on a trust," and she goes on to
say that trust "is inherently problematic." She then issues a warning
that the world's money is less secure than we like to think.
Pixley, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Anthropology
in the University of New South Wales, Australia, argues that money is
not tangible but a promise based on rarely-examined premises: "Since
the idea of money as a promise' is counterintuitive, going against the
every day experience of its tangibility in our hands and wallets, most
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Being Here
by Ernest Hekkanen
There is poetry which transports one to sublime heights and then there
is poetry which dumps one in an abyss of despair, and Being Here by
Robert Meyer definitely belongs to the latter category.
In the tradition of Cline's Voyage to the End of the Night, Bukowski's
Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, or, more
recently, Bruce Serafin's Colin's Big Thing, Being Here is an
unremitting, caffeine stare into the face of destitution at "Main and
Hastings", the title of the second poem, where "the sidewalk
deals/cards out to the game."
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: South of the Border
by Cindy MacKenzie
Marlis Wesseler's second novel, South of the Border (after Elvis
Unplugged), takes us back to the hippie era of the '60s and '70s when
two Canadian friends, Arlene and Sheila, decide to travel to Mexico.
Far from their native Saskatchewan, they can behave with the
insouciant abandon that young tourists often adopt. In hot pursuit of
one of the most vaunted ideals of the era, "Experience", the young
women make reckless and often dangerous decisions about arranging
their accommodations, hitchhiking and engaging in first-time sexual
encounters.
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Reading the Fascicles of Emily Dickinson: Dwelling in Possibilities
by Cindy MacKenzie
The persistent fascination of scholars and readers with Emily
Dickinson's preparation of forty fascicles'-those little booklets of
carefully stitched stationery sheets of about half of the over 1700
poems she wrote between 1856 and 1864-is central to an understanding
of the genius of this great nineteenth-century American poet. In
Eleanor Heginbotham's enthusiastic and thorough examination of the
fascicles, the primary focus is on demonstrating the "intentional
artistry" of the poet in compiling these booklets as a form of
self-publishing, and more interestingly, as a space where she can edit
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King
by Christopher Ondaatje
Her Royal Highness, Princess Michael of Kent, herself a descendant of
both Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers, has written a moving
account of an intriguing time in Renaissance France, when a love
triangle dominated both court and politics. It is an extraordinary
story.
The first half of the 16th century was a time of giants: the
dazzlingly attractive Francois I on the throne of France, a young and
still attractive Henry VIII on the throne of England, a young (and
less attractive) Charles V as the Holy Roman Emperor, and two Medici
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me: An Autobiography
by Clara Thomas
As producer and director, Norman Jewison has had the most successful
career in television and movies of any Canadian. He climaxed and
celebrated his career by establishing the Canadian Film Centre on
Bayview Avenue in Toronto, an immensely important amenity for the
entire Canadian film industry. He never relinquished his Canadian
identity. Like him, Dixie, his wife, grew up in the
Beaches/Scarborough area of Toronto and the two older of their three
children were born in Canada. The Caledon farm is their most prized
and permanent home. His life story, written because of a promise to
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Village of the Small Houses: A Memoir of Sorts
by Gordon Phinn
Almost every writer, upon realising that the much sought after palace
of adulthood, with its glittering prizes of personal volition and
velocity, is actually the first act in a highly theatrical slog to
decrepitude and death, firmly turns their back on the flow of time and
attempts to reconquer the lost kingdom of childhood, where they were
young and easy under the apple boughs.
Most often, this leads to the inevitable spying on progeny from the
prim heights of parenthood and plying the aged with oily interest and
praise, followed by murmurs of assent and a slinking away to take
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Blackbodying
by Gordon Phinn
Almost every writer, upon realising that the much sought after palace
of adulthood, with its glittering prizes of personal volition and
velocity, is actually the first act in a highly theatrical slog to
decrepitude and death, firmly turns their back on the flow of time and
attempts to reconquer the lost kingdom of childhood, where they were
young and easy under the apple boughs.
Most often, this leads to the inevitable spying on progeny from the
prim heights of parenthood and plying the aged with oily interest and
praise, followed by murmurs of assent and a slinking away to take
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Beware of God
by Michael Greenstein
A picture of a growling dog accompanies the title of Shalom
Auslander's debut collection of short stories, Beware of God,
reminding us of the reversal between "god" and "dog", an inversion
that presents itself in the opening story, "The War of the
Bernsteins". The quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein places them on
opposite sides of the same mattress-he trying to become an
increasingly observant Jew, she subverting all of his beliefs. With
elements from Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer, the story exhibits a
perfect symmetry: it begins with a list of items Bernstein keeps under
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: To Be Continued. . .
by Jason Brown
To Be Continued is Gordon j.h. Leenders second book. His first, May
Not Appear Exactly As Shown, was awarded the city of Hamilton's Best
Fiction Book in 2004. Hamilton should love Gordon j.h. Leenders, since
he so clearly in love with it. To Be Continued is, in sum, an homage
to this city. Characters in a long series of brief vignettes have the
locales and the history of Hamilton for setting and background. Their
stories are small beads on a thread that runs through Hamilton's
streets and parks, along its Lake Ontario shoreline and through its
stores and cafes.
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Greetings from the Vodka Sea
by Harold Heft
"If it bends," begins the famously pompous lecture by the character of
Lester (Alan Alda) in Woody Allen's 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors,
"it's funny. If it breaks, it's not funny." Comparing two new books of
short stories by Canadian writers Chris Gudgeon and Gary Barwin
suggests a similar judgment about the extent to which authors can
experiment with the nature of reality-if it bends, it can be poignant;
if it breaks, it's probably meaningless.
Chris Gudgeon, who made his name as a non-fiction writer best known
for his biography of Stan Rogers, has emerged as a major new talent in
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Dr. Weep and Other Strange Teeth
by Harold Heft
"If it bends," begins the famously pompous lecture by the character of
Lester (Alan Alda) in Woody Allen's 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors,
"it's funny. If it breaks, it's not funny." Comparing two new books of
short stories by Canadian writers Chris Gudgeon and Gary Barwin
suggests a similar judgment about the extent to which authors can
experiment with the nature of reality-if it bends, it can be poignant;
if it breaks, it's probably meaningless.
Gary Barwin's new book, Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth, as
suggested in the title, is a collection of short pieces written in
...
Read more...
|  | Dark Age Ahead
by Jane Jacobs
Vintage Canada $21 Paperback
ISBN: 0679313109
|
Book Review A Review of: Dark Age Ahead
by Nicholas Maes
The historical landscape is littered with dead civilizations, and this
suggests the historian is to some degree a pathologist. Besides
describing the character, res gestae and organization of societies,
historians must account for the manner of their collapse, and seek for
pathogens' common to the demise of them all. Thus Gibbon hypothesises
the "triumph of barbarism and religion" as the cause of Rome's doom;
Spengler in his Decline of the West equates civilizations with
organisms, both being subject to the same inevitable decay; Toynbee
argues that societies break down when their ideologies cannot
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life
by Christopher Ondaatje
Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of the United States, once
described New York City as "a cloacina of all the depravities of human
nature." Whether this was justified or not, there is little doubt that
the City's reputation stemmed from its origins as a remote outpost of
the Dutch Empire in the seventeenth century. It was the Dutch who
invented the rudiments of modern finance (the very first exchange was
set up by dealers to trade in stocks on a bridge over the Amstel River
in Amsterdam). The Dutch colony in America created by Holland in its
"avidity for trade and lucre" ignored the scriptural preoccupations of
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Knowledge and Civilization
by by Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
In Knowledge and Civilization Barry Allen gives us another account and
reworking of the problem of knowledge, which he inherited and
admirably developed from the philosophy of his mentor, Richard Rorty.
This book offers an extension of the thesis fleshed out in Truth in
Philosophy, which Allen published twelve years ago. Both books are
redescriptions of philosophy not only after metaphysics, but also
after the so-called "analytical/continental division" that is quietly
coming to an end. The conclusion of this philosophical division is not
being replaced by another foundational division, but by
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution
by Naomi Black
Judy Rebick, author of Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist
Revolution, is a provocative journalist who from 1990 to 1993 was
president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women
(NAC), the large Canadian coalition of feminist and feminist-friendly
organizations. As she led NAC's very vocal opposition to the
Charlottetown Accord, she became something of a public figure. Rebick
identifies her perspective as "socialist-feminist." And it seems fair
to say that, in general, her affinities are with the activist unions
and the NDP. At present she holds the Canadian Auto Workers-Sam Gindin
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Where Race Does Not Matter: The New Spirit of Modernity
by Martin Loney
Cecil Foster's book is his third on the subject of race in Canada. The
title suggests a sea change in Foster's thinking about his adopted
country, an optimistic vision in which Canada will be a world leader
in creating a society where, as the jacket tells us, "race does not
matter." If this is a fundamental conversion, and Canada has now
become a beacon to the world, how is it to be explained?
In 1991 the Barbadian-born writer's Distorted Mirror: Canada's Racist
Face bemoaned the widespread discrimination faced by visible
minorities. Foster found that "Canada is a racist country and always
...
Read more...
| | Book Review A Review of: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left
by Ron Stang
Is there anyone better able to dissect the contemporary U.S. Left than
David Horowitz? After all, it takes one-at least who used to be one-to
know one. And like a whole slew of former Leftists over the last 30
years (Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Ronald Radosh, Sidney Hook,
and Horowitz's sometimes writing mate, Peter Collier, among others),
when these folks critique the Left, they know of what they speak
because they've been there. They know the ideological code words,
frames of thought, and rhetoric.
But more than others, Horowitz has made something of a career of his
...
Read more...
|
|
