HOME  |  CONTACT US  |
 


Book Reviews in September 1998 Issue

A Stolen Life The Journey of a Cree Woman
by Rudy Wiebe,

496 pages $34.95 TC
ISBN: 0676970486
Book Review
A Gift of Understanding
by Maureen Harris
On November 18th, 1992, the novelist Rudy Wiebe received a letter from Yvonne Johnson. Johnson identified herself as a prisoner in Kingston's Prison for Women (P4W) and a great-great-granddaughter of the legendary Cree leader Big Bear. She wrote because
Read more...
Forms of Devotion Stories & Pictures
by Diane Schoemperlen,

Viking Penguin
223 pages $25 TC
ISBN: 0670876968
Book Review
Engraving Stories
by Nikki Abraham
You know how a really great jazz musician can take an old tune and play with it-twist it, bend it, loop it back on itself, turn it upside down, appear to abandon it completely and then, with a sly flourish, return it to you fresh, new, still itself but
Read more...
Eyeing the North Star Directions in African-Canadian Literature
by George E. Clarke,

pages $19.99 PT
ISBN: 0771021259
Genealogy of Resistance Essays
by M. Nourbese Philip,

pages $18.95 PT
ISBN: 1551280477
Black Like Who?
by Rinaldo Walcott,

pages $19.99 PT
ISBN: 1895837073
Book Review
In-Between Language
by Ted Whittaker
To read black Canadian literature is a heady adventure-the texts, and the writers' careers, in some instances their apparent tenure in this country, are so recent-and it's true, they themselves are so thin on the ground-that the works can still be looked
Read more...
Great Realizations The New Age
by Hugh Hood,

288 pages $28.95 TP
ISBN: 0887841716
Book Review
It's Almost Time
by J Struthers
I wonder how many readers possess the intellectual instincts, the training, the willingness or time, or the peace of mind to read a novel-let alone a series of twelve interconnected novels-as an extended autobiographical meditation, as a long poem, as a
Read more...
Headed for the Blues A Memoir with Ten Stories
by Josef Skvorecky,

280 pages $17.95 TP
ISBN: 0676971032
Book Review
Built-in Bends
by Marketa Goetz-Stankewisz
This is a brief but extraordinary memoir. It seems to move effortlessly between various levels-geographic, chronological, political, personal, literary. The reader feels as if afloat on a tossing vessel, touching land on different shores, awash with
Read more...
Sweet Ellipsis
by John Barton,

120 pages $12 TP
ISBN: 1550223542
Book Review
Barton's Funk
by Richard Vaughan
Twenty years and a half dozen acclaimed books into his career as one of Canada's most celebrated poets, John Barton has yet to become the fixed, or fixated, commodity we expect our poets to grow up to be. While there is a stuffed handbag's worth of
Read more...
Counting Out the Millennium
by John Oughton,

Pecan Grove Press
84 pages $10 TP
ISBN: 1877603376
Book Review
The Only Real Estate
by Kenneth Sherman
John Oughton has had a sporadic career as a poet. His first book, Taking Tree Trains (1973), was followed eleven years later by Gearing of Love. This has been partly due to the fact that Oughton's interests are many. He is an accomplished
Read more...
Who Killed Canadian History?
by J. L. Granatstein,

128 pages $22 TC
ISBN: 0002557592
Book Review
Historicide
by Belinda Beaton
After thirty years as a professional historian, Jack Granatstein is well placed to comment on the way Canadian history is taught. This book warns that a frightening future awaits Canada if we continue down a path towards historical amnesia. Functional
Read more...
County of Birches
by Judith Kalman,

192 pages $18.95 TP
ISBN: 1550546244
100 Cigarettes & a Bottle of Vodka
by Arthur Schaller,

257 pages $28.95 CT
ISBN: 1894121007
Book Review
Surviving in the Third Person
by Sherie Posesorski
As many survivors of the Holocaust are compelled to do, Primo Levi kept retelling the story of his ten months in Auschwitz in his essays and memoirs. In his last book, The Drowned & the Saved, the explanation for why lies in the epigraph Levi has
Read more...
Better Living In Pursuit of Happiness from Plato to Prozac
by Mark Kingwell,

408 pages $32 CT
ISBN: 0670875023
Book Review
Happy Camper?
by Thomas Hurka
There are two attitudes to happiness. One is to wonder what it is and how it relates to other important concepts such as pleasure, duty, and the good life. The other is to try to get as much of it as possible as quickly as possible. The first is the
Read more...
An Ecology of Enchantment A Year in a Country Garden
by Desmond Kennedy,

256 pages $20 TP
ISBN: 000638482X
Book Review
HortiGulfure
by Brian Brett
The world of garden literature, real literature, has fallen on hard times. Lately, all one encounters are rows of pretty books with texts that could have been written by committees, books usually oriented towards a specific niche market.
Read more...
The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen Democracy under the Rule of Big Business
by Murray Dobbin,

320 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 0773730877
Book Review
Global Warnings
by Ian Allaby
If you like polemic, and especially if you're bitter against "triumphalist" capitalism, you'll love Murray Dobbin's The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen. Mr. Dobbin's book is a critique of globalization. It's fair to say he covers
Read more...
Nature in Ireland A Scientific & Cultural History
by John W. Foster, Helena C. Chesney,

Dufour Editions, Incorporated
658 pages $75 TC
ISBN: 1874675295
Book Review
History Through Natural History
by Kildare Dobbs
From Lilliput Press in Ireland comes this big, beautiful volume on the history of natural history in Ireland. A collection of learned essays by various hands, it is in some sense an international collaboration, since the general editor, John Wilson Foster
Read more...
Warrior's Honour Ethnic War & the Modern Consciousness
by Michael Ignatieff,

pages $10.99 TP
ISBN: 0701163240
Book Review
Texture of Troubles
by Waller Newell
The Warrior's Honour is a series of essays emerging from Michael Ignatieff's travels "through the landscapes of modern ethnic war" between 1993 and 1997, including Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Readers who liked his previous
Read more...
Rubber Bullets Power & Conscience in Modern Israel
by Yaron Ezrahi,

320 pages $39.95 TC
ISBN: 0374252793
Anatomy of a Miracle The End of Apartheid & the Birth of the New South Africa
by Patti Waldmeir,

384 pages $38.99 TC
ISBN: 0393039978
Aftermath The Remnants of War
by Donovan Webster,

280 pages $32 TC
ISBN: 0614061830
Coffee & Power Revolution & the Rise of Democracy in Central America
by Jeffery M. Paige,

432 pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0674136489
Aftermath The Landscape of War
by Donovan Webster,

288 pages $32 TC
ISBN: 0679431950
Death So Noble Memory, Meaning, & the First World War
by Jonathan F. Vance,

336 pages $39.95 TC
ISBN: 077480601X
Book Review
A Cosmopolitan Quintet
by Gerald Owen
We live in an era of de-globalization. Print and broadcast media are reporting less than they used to about countries outside their own, not knowing what matters in the world at large-except for sporadic spurts of horror. There is no great conflict
Read more...
Ingratitude
by Ying Chen, Carol Volk,

154 pages $18.95 TP
ISBN: 1550542672
Book Review
Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth
by Mary Soderstrom
Ying Chen is a small woman, who at first glance appears much younger than her thirty-seven years. As captured in Georges Dufaux's film for the National Film Board, Voyage Illusoire, she looks almost like a teenager when she's shown drifting down a
Read more...
Interviews
A Sequel to Internment - Eva Tihanyi speaks with Kerri Sakamoto
by Eva Tihanyi
Kerri Sakamoto, who is thirty-nine, was born and raised in Toronto, to which she returned in 1996 after a seven-year stay in New York City. She holds a Master's degree in creative writing from New York University and has written
Read more...
Letters to Editor
To the Editor
I take exception to Alison Sutherland's condescending and whining comments concerning Sheila Dalton's book Catalogue. First of all, Dalton is a poet in her own right with many poems having appeared in Canadian literary magazines over the past ten years
Read more...
Essays
Dogs of Several Species
by Annette Goldsmith
The dog is a familiar figure in Canadian letters. As Leon Rooke demonstrates in Shakespeare's Dog, a pet's perspective on the world can be quite revealing. In children's books, the Canadian literary dog functions as observer, companion,
Read more...
The Wise & Foolish Virgins
by Don Hannah,

384 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 0676970990
First Novels
First Novels - Slippery Memory
by Eva Tihanyi
The Wise & Foolish Virgins (Knopf Canada, 426 pages, $29.95 cloth), by the award-winning playwright Don Hannah, is a story of intersection (perhaps "collision" would be a better word) set in a small New Brunswick town called
Read more...
Childhood
by Andre Alexis,

276 pages $19.99 TP
ISBN: 0771006659
First Novels
First Novels - Slippery Memory
by Eva Tihanyi
An even more auspicious debut novel is Childhood (McClelland & Stewart, 270 pages, $19.99 paper), by André Alexis. This is a quiet, contemplative novel, reminiscent of a long reverie. The narrator, Thomas MacMillan, now thirty, reflects upon
Read more...
Tracey Fragments
by M. Medved,

208 pages $18.95 PT
ISBN: 0887846122
First Novels
First Novels - Slippery Memory
by Eva Tihanyi
Fifteen-year-old Tracey Berkowitz, the narrator of Maureen Medved's The Tracey Fragments (House of Anansi, 156 pages, $18.95 paper), is struggling in the stressful throes of adolescence. Unlike Thomas, she isn't looking back on her childhood;
Read more...
Guilty
by Sky Gilbert,

192 pages $18.99 PT
ISBN: 1895837294
First Novels
First Novels - Slippery Memory
by Eva Tihanyi
Yet another playwright joining the first novelist ranks is Toronto's Sky Gilbert with Guilty (Insomniac Press, 155 pages, $18.99 paper). Gilbert, co-founder of the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, has, like Medved, written a dramatic monologue
Read more...
Peripheries
by Helene Littmann,

272 pages $18.95 TP
ISBN: 1896951082
First Novels
First Novels - Slippery Memory
by Eva Tihanyi
Peripheries (Cormorant Books, 265 pages, $18.95 paper), by Helene Littmann, is actually three novellas linked by certain commonalities of theme and setting. All three take place in Vancouver and feature female protagonists, ranging in age from
Read more...
Janey's Girl
by Gayle Friesen,

224 pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 1550744615
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Allison Sutherland
First-time authors of children's and teenagers' books have a heartbreaking time ahead of them. They are in competition not only with the new books of the season, but with Charlotte's Web, Treasure Island, Kevin Major's Hold Fast,
Read more...
Stephen Fair
by Tim Wynne-Jones,

192 pages $9.95 TP
ISBN: 0888992955
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
A new book by Tim Wynne-Jones is always something to celebrate and Stephen Fair is no exception. It's a compellingly readable novel that sensitively explores contemporary family life and the ties that bind us to one another. Fifteen-year-old
Read more...
The Kids Book of Canadian Prime Ministers
by Pat Hancock, John Mantha,

32 pages $18.95 TC
ISBN: 1550744739
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeanette Clark
Who says Canadian history is stuffy? In this large-format book, our PMs only look like stuffed shirts. Perhaps it's the illustrator's courtroom experience. He has focused, with interesting results, on the sartorial side of our leaders' lives.
Read more...
Amanda Adams Loved Herbie Hickle
by Patti Farmer, Daniel Sylvestre,

32 pages $5.99 TC
ISBN: 0590124447
I Miss Franklin P. Shuckles
by Ulana Snihura, Leanne Franson,

32 pages $15.95 LB
ISBN: 1550375172
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Judi McCallum
Having loving feelings or a "crush" on someone is nearly universal among young children, so it is not unusual that two new titles dealing with the phenomenon appeared this past spring. What is of note, however, is that the authors of both these bo
Read more...
Umbrella Party
by Janet Lunn,

pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 088899298X
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Margo Beggs
The mark of a good picture-book is that you want to read it aloud. You want to find a child and say, "Would you like me to read you a story?" You look forward to laughing over the illustrations and hearing a child say, "Read it again." That's how I felt
Read more...
This Land A Cross-Country Anthology of Canadian Fiction for Young Readers
320 pages $25
ISBN: 0670878960
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Julie Glazer
Kit Pearson's This Land, an outstanding new anthology of stories by Canadian children's authors linked thematically through landscape, exceeds expectations. As a young child I hated anthologies. Often the source was unnamed and impossible to find
Read more...
Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - Visual Writers
by Douglas Fetherling
That there was a recent exhibition of works-on-paper by Victor Hugo, at the Drawing Center in New York, is surprising but not astounding, for the great nineteenth-century French poet and novelist is remembered as an all-round genius. As Jean Cocteau,
Read more...
footer

Home First Novel Award Past Winners Subscription Back Issues Timescroll Advertizing Rates
Amazon.ca/Books in Canada Bestsellers List Books in Issue Books in Department About Us