| Book Review A Review of: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
by Nancy Wigston
Giller-prize winner (The Book of Secrets, 1994) M.G. Vassanji's new
novel might be subtitled The Book of Truth, a nod to the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, which uncovered the buried secrets of the
apartheid regime in South Africa. Like his protagonist, African-bred
Vikram Lall, M.G. Vassanji was born in Kenya. The Kenya he portrays in
his novel has a fledgling "Anti-Corruption Commission", charged with
investigating the excesses of the once-heralded Kenyatta regime and
its successors. But unlike South Africa, the Kenyan commission has
enjoyed no success when the book opens. Multi-layered, completely
...
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|  | The Tattooed Girl
by Joyce Carol Oates
HarperCollins Canada / Ecco Press $39.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0060531061
|
Book Review A Review of: The Tattooed Girl
by Richard Harvor
Like a potty-mouthed child, Joyce Carol Oates craves attention.
Cranking out the obscenities with the grueling regularity of
McDonald's hamburgers, she's a logorrheic wonder (30 novels under her
own name, 8 under the pseudonym Rosamind Smith; 19 short story
collections; 8 volumes of poetry; 8 books of essays; 7 plays; 4
novellas; one book for children and one for young adults). With the
bloodhound nose of a tabloid hack, she seizes-rabidly, rapaciously,
and with a Rotweiler's tenacity-onto the sensationalistic, glazes,
gussies it up with a fancy-pants scrim of "literary" respectability
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: HomeBaking: the Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World
by Sarah Sheard
The husband and wife team of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid already
have three award-winning cookbooks under their belts and this fourth
one will likely win honours as well. Their first collaboration,
published in 1995, Flatbreads and Flavours: a Baker's Atlas (James
Beard Cookbook of the year Award), was a compendium of different
unleavened breads around the world. The peripatetic couple documented
their gastronomic travels throughout Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe,
North Africa and North America. Along the way, they interviewed the
locals, sampled their wares, photographed them in situ, then returned
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Decadent Desserts
by Byron Ayanoglu
Jean Par is Canada's own Martha Stewart (minus, thank-goodness, the
financial shenanigans), a sort-of catering inspired, one-chef empire
with its self-owned Company's Coming publishing factory that churns
off endless tomes of her recipes and claims sales of over twenty
million books worldwide.
Par's latest, Decadent Desserts, joins its syrupy call to her six
other books on desserts, as well as to the countless sugary treats to
be found in the dessert sections of the rest of her cookbooks. Hers is
a one-woman oeuvre to satisfy all the cravings of this nation's overly
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: It Must Have Been Something I Ate (The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything)
by Brian Fawcett
Jeffrey Steingarten has been conducting a one-man campaign against
culinary xenophobia for twenty years. He's been around long enough-and
is respected enough in culinary circles-to have been made a Chevalier
in the French Order of Merit for his writing about French Gastronomy
in 1994. He's also the long-time food writer for Vogue Magazine,
something that surprised me more than a little: who knew the haute
couture crowd ate food at all, or that Vogue published articles that
aren't as emaciated as their models? It Must've Been Something I Ate
is a collection of 38 of the Vogue columns, and a sequel to his The
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: All Stirred Up: Over 150 of the Best Recipes from the WomenÆs Culinary Network
by Margaret Dragu
With more than 150 recipes from 66 contributors, this slim146-page
celebration of the Women's Culinary Network weighs in as a meaty
addition to publications about Canadian (mostly Toronto) cooking. In
1990, like a phoenix from the flame of their mutual unemployment
slips, Marilyn B. Crowley, Heather Epp, Elaina Asselin and Nettie
Cronish formed the Women's Culinary Network as a supportive
environment for women in the food industry to share professional
experience, knowledge and information. Their 250 members include
chefs, food consultants, dieticians, cooking teachers, cookbook
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Toscana Mia: The Heart and Soul of Tuscan Cooking
by Jon Kalina
Umberto Menghi is one of those guys you could strangle. He has a
beautiful villa in Tuscany, he has a loving wife, he has a cooking
school, a restaurant and he publishes lush cookbooks, the latest of
which is Toscana Mia: The Heart and Soul of Tuscan Cooking. At least
he doesn't complain about his lot in life.
"Mia Toscana" (which translates as "My Tuscany") is part cookbook,
part family memoir, and part advertisement for his cooking school.
There are plentiful recipes, wine recommendations from Canadian wine
writer Anthony Gismondi (as warned, you may or may not find these
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Tante MarieÆs Cooking School Cookbook
by Sarah Sheard
This is the first cookbook produced by Mary Risley, founder of Tante
Marie's Cooking School. The 250 recipes included do not cover all the
culinary waterfronts but offer a firm foundation from which any
adventurous cook may sally forth. Each recipe provides easily grasped
instructions on everything from how to trim artichokes to wrapping
salmon in parchment bundles with beurre blanc. A number of basic
French cookbooks also do this of course, but Risley-and this is
rarer-encourages improvisation. In each section, she includes a how to
cook this without a recipe' entry. If it isn't a salmon looking up
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: East of Paris: the New Cuisines of Austria and The Danube
by Sarah Sheard
Connecticut-born David Bouley is a wunderkind. A baby chef by his
teens, he finished high school and headed for the Sorbonne to study
business but got sidetracked, apprenticing instead with la creme de la
creme chefs of various Paris kitchens. His passion for food led him to
Vienna and there he fell in love with Austrian cuisine. How, exactly,
to define that? Well, the Danube river flows through a number of
countries, picking up the flavours of each locale's distinctive
classic dishes and seasonings until it reaches Vienna to deposit a
transcultural smorgasbord, the logical place for an enterprising chef
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Crete on the Half Shell
by Olga Stein
Crete on the Half Shell is many things-travel memoir, account of the
author's reacquaintanceship with the more and less savoury aspects of
his Greek heritage, tale of the mad, mad, mad world of restaurateuring
in Crete, as well as what amounts to a series of well-written episodes
of watch your favorite ego-maniacal chef scour an island for just the
right ingredients and then prepare a gastronomical wonder of a meal',
guaranteed to drive you to the fridge repeatedly in doomed attempts at
finding something to satisfy the powerful cravings stirred up by Crete
on the Half Shell.
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Shaken by Physics
by Ethan Paquin
Crows, ubiquitous in John MacKenzie's second book, Shaken by Physics,
"could be angels. / Devoid of mercy, or cruelty. / Meaning." The same
can not be said about his poems, which are as heavy and ruminative as
canticles and insistently probe re/generation and dissolution. With a
knack for such gorgeous moments as those crows "skat[ing] across
vision," Shaken by Physics is a book obsessed with not only the
eponymous science-gravity, entropy, sound, machinery, "particle
theory," equations, Heisenberg, and "the work of rebuilding the world
everyday"-but with religious silences. The heft of his short- to
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Finders Keepers
by Geoffrey Cook
"[P]oetry can make an order as true to the impact of external reality
and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet's being as the ripples
that ripple in and ripple out across the water in [a] scullery bucket
[bestirred by a passing train]... An order where we can at last grow
up to that which we stored up as we grew. An order which satisfies all
that is appetitive in the intelligence and prehensile in the
affections...[Poetry makes] possible a fluid and restorative
relationship between the mind's centre and its circumference. "
- Crediting Poetry, Seamus Heaney
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Quebecite (A Jazz Fantasia In Three Cantos)
by Keith Garebian
George Elliott Clarke's Qubcit is an expanded version of a libretto he
wrote at the request of the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2003. It does not
have the music composed by Juno Award-winning pianist, D.D. Jackson,
but it is an attractive paperback in crisply mannerist Galliard type.
It most certainly is not trivial. However, it amounts to far less than
Clarke probably intended. Conceived as a three-part jazz fantasia
about two interracial couples in Quebec City at the end of the 20th
century, it is an opera whose grand objective is-as Ajay Heble remarks
in his "Postlude"-a new understanding of "identity, belonging, and
...
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|  | Betrayer, The
by Michael Hennessey
Goose Lane Editions $19.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1894838033
|
Book Review A Review of: The Betrayer
by W.P. Kinsella
In police investigations there is something called the Mysterious Dude
Theory, which generally gives the police a good laugh or two in somber
situations. A killer may be apprehended standing over a corpse with
the smoking gun in his hand, but he will claim that a few seconds
before a mysterious dude committed the crime, then thrust the gun into
his innocent hand. In Hennessey's novel the Mysterious Dude actually
exists. If fact his name is Hugh Michael "Mickey" Casey, and he
narrates the story. Mickey grows up in a catholic orphanage in the
1930s in a slummy part of Charlottetown, where the only thing good is
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Animal Sciences
by W.P. Kinsella
Odd is the first word that comes to mind to describe this novel.
However, a number of synonyms also apply: atypical, deviant, aberrant,
abnormal, irregular, peculiar, eccentric. There are five characters:
Kookla, a strange, troubled 20-something woman, whose unlikely name is
never explained; Robin, her ex-boyfriend, an failed medical student
who may be several cards short of a full deck; Autumn (a male) who is
also a current/ex-boyfriend; Duffer (a male) who is a platonic friend
of Kookla, but would probably like to be more; and Igor, an immigrant
whose only purpose in the book seems to be that he owns a broken down
...
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|  | Better than Life
by Margaret Gunning
NeWest Press $18.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1896300693
|
Book Review A Review of: Better than Life
by W.P. Kinsella
Better than Life is a good Southern novel, Southern Ontario that is.
Reminiscent of Lee Smith's Fancy Strut, this story moves relentlessly
toward a celebration, the 90th birthday of Min Connar. Min is a
controlling old matriarch who regularly feigns death in order to keep
her henpecked son Aubrey in line. The Connar clan is divided into two
camps several miles apart, camps that have not exchanged a word for
many years, and don't really recall why they are feuding anyway. Small
town life with all its eccentricities, pettiness, and
mean-spiritedness is captured in often hilarious detail.
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: All My Friends are Superheroes
by W.P. Kinsella
We have here a very short tale, probably less than 30,000 words,
however the laughs are plentiful. One has to suspend disbelief and
accept the narrator's statement that "There are 249 superheroes in the
City of Toronto. . . None of them have secret identities. Very few
wear costumes." Tom, our narrator, is married to the Perfectionist,
whose superpower is an ability to will things to be orderly. On their
wedding day, a bad superhero, Hypno, hypnotizes the Perfectionist to
believe Tom is invisible. Thinking Tom has disappeared the
Perfectionist is heartbroken and six months later decides to fly to
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: A Game to Play on the Tracks
by W.P. Kinsella
In my bottom drawer are a couple of would-be novels that that sprinted
out of the gate and roared along for 50 to a 100 pages, then petered
out. I knew I could never match the pace of those opening pages so
left them unfinished. Such is pretty much the case with Jackson's
novel, which is a wild slippery ride (a novella unto itself) for
nearly 100 pages, but then loses it's fire.
Arden is a thirtyish county singer with an aching heart and an alcohol
problem who marries a bland fellow named Nichol, has a baby, Roy, and
tries to lead a domestic life. But the pull of the road is too much
...
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|  | Stitches
by Glen Huser
Douglas & McIntyre $9.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0888995784
|
Book Review A Review of: Stitches
by Olga Stein
Stitches, this year's Governor General's Literary Award winner in the
category of text for young readers, is a delight. Generally, it is
hard for me to focus on a kids' book without first imagining that I'm
reading it to someone young enough to be interested. No need for such
projection in this case. I ploughed through the book in one sitting
and enjoyed the read.
The writing is definitely good. It may not be great literature, but it
is intelligent, engaging, and brings the characters to life no less
perceptively than a book intended for adult readers. Nor are the
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Song Within My Heart
by Olga Stein
This tribute to Cree traditions, spirituality, as well as to the
memory of Allen Sapp's grandmother, his Nokum, Maggie Soonias, won the
Governor General's Award for children's book illustration. The
illustrations are in deed a compelling combination of the traditional
and Sapp's unique vision. They are often dark, slightly sad depictions
of life on the reserve during Sapp's childhood. Happiness is derived
from communal activities, not from material possessions. The interior
of Maggie Soonias's cabin is cramped and sparsely furnished, but
Maggie fills it with her larger-than-life, loving presence. Sapp's art
...
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|  | Birdland
by Tracy Mack
Scholastic Us $21.33 Hardcover
ISBN: 0439535905
|
Book Review A Review of: Birdland
by Heather Birrell
Thirteen-year-old Jed and his best friend, skateboard wiz Flyer are
filming a documentary film for their teacher Velly (Mr. Velasquez) who
has asked them to represent their neighbourhood for a class
assignment. They roam New York's East Village, taking in sights and
landmarks both strange and familiar, and hanging out with Jamal the
drummer, Melody the perpetually smiling, sixteen-year-old waitress,
and Kiki, a mysterious homeless girl. The streets offer plenty of
distractions and adventures, but what Jed really craves is a
connection to his older brother Zeke, who recently died of insulin
...
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|  | Missing Matthew
by Kristyn Dunnion
Fitzhenry & Whiteside $12.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0889952787
|
Book Review A Review of: Missing Matthew
by Heather Birrell
In Missing Matthew, Kristyn Dunnion has created a world that is truly
kid-centred. Replete with all the whimsy, confusion, kindness and
cruelty childhood entails, this novel is particularly notable for its
wonderful depiction of the world of play. Its narrator Winifred
(Freddie) Zoron, aka Rebel F, decides it is up to her and her best
friend Weasel Peterson, aka Rebel Leader, and her sister Jelly, aka
Rebel J, to scour the small town of Rockwell searching for their
classmate, Matthew, when he doesn't show up at school one day.
Together, the Rebel Rescue Squad eventually stumble upon Matthew
...
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|  | Notes From Exile
by Dorothy/Yannick Speirs/Portebois
University Of Toronto Press $27.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 080203747X
|
Book Review A Review of: Notes from Exile
by George Fetherling
When I was about 15, I stumbled on a book no one else seemed to have
checked out of the public library in decades: mile Zola, Novelist and
Reformer: An Account of his Life and Work. It was published in 1904, a
couple of years after the great French novelist's tragic death. (He
died at his writing desk, after accidentally kicking open an unlighted
gas jet-as depicted by Paul Muni in the last scene of The Life of
Emile Zola, a once-famous Hollywood film.)
The book I pulled from the stacks turned out to be straightforward to
the point of being simple-minded but it had the advantage of being
...
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|  | Judge Not
by Andre Gide
University of Illinois Press $37.75 Hardcover
ISBN: 0252028449
|
Book Review A Review of: Judge Not
by George Fetherling
Andr Gide was the great French novelist and littrateur who became
sufficiently old and respectable to receive the Nobel Prize in 1947.
Like Zola, Gide was a critic of the French legal system, though
justice and not injustice is what interested him. He especially liked
to observe the mechanics of the courts. Other busy people might scheme
and fib to get out of jury duty, but Gide plotted and pleaded to be
chosen.
One of the pieces collected and translated by Benjamin Ivry for Judge
Not, his choice of Gide's non-fiction about crime, is a memoir of his
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol
by Paul Dutton
A singular figure in Canadian letters, bpNichol (1944-1988) excelled
in more areas of literary endeavour than the average author ever even
considers. Internationally renowned for his visual poetry by the age
of twenty-two, a Governor General's Award winner for poetry (jointly
with Michael Ondaatje in 1970), before he was thirty, a pioneer of
sound poetry in Canada, a major exponent of the long poem (his
multi-volume The Martyrology remains in print and on courses), lyric
poet, fictioneer, essayist, and children's author, he also created
cross-genre poem-drawings and comics, wrote comic-book adaptations of
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: bpNichol Comics
by Paul Dutton
There has long been a need for a scholarly effort as assiduous as that
which Miki has applied to Nichol's critical writing to be exerted on a
volume of Nichol's poetic comics, both strips and single panels. It
saddens me deeply to report that that need remains unchanged by
bpNichol Comics, which could almost be subtitled a Book of Abandoned
Projects. While some valuable material appears within its pages-e.g.,
the complete Lonely Fred strips, in their first general
publication-there is far too much that will interest only the most
fanatical Nicholite: juvenilia, preliminary sketches, planning notes,
...
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|  | Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Vintage Canada $21 Paperback
ISBN: 0676973779
|
Book Review A Review of: Life of Pi
by Peter Yan
Is the 2002 Man Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel
inspired by the 20-year-old novella Max and the Cats by Moacyr Scliar?
Or is Martel himself a copycat, plagiarizing the story's premise of a
shipwrecked youth stranded in a lifeboat with a ferocious feline?
Martel claims he never read Scliar's novella firsthand, reading the
story's premise in a book review of Max and the Cats. Martel,
according to his author's note in Life of Pi, based the character
Piscine Molitor Patel on the real life events of a real Pi Patel
living in Scarborough, and on the historical records of Patel's
...
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|  | Max and the Cats
by Moacyr Scliar
Key Porter Books $14.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0886194180
|
Book Review A Review of: Max and the Cats
by Peter Yan
Is the 2002 Man Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel
inspired by the 20-year-old novella Max and the Cats by Moacyr Scliar?
Or is Martel himself a copycat, plagiarizing the story's premise of a
shipwrecked youth stranded in a lifeboat with a ferocious feline?
Martel claims he never read Scliar's novella firsthand, reading the
story's premise in a book review of Max and the Cats. Martel,
according to his author's note in Life of Pi, based the character
Piscine Molitor Patel on the real life events of a real Pi Patel
living in Scarborough, and on the historical records of Patel's
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Seeing in the Dark: How Amateur Astronomers are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe
by Brian Charles Clark
In today's climate of Big Science, where scientists with one or more
PhDs ruthlessly compete for limited grant money and limited viewing
time on big telescopes, it would be easy to assume that amateur
astronomers simply have no place in astronomy. In fact, this is far
from the case. Because access to big scopes is so competitive,
professional astronomers tend to turn their gazes toward "big topic"
targets: distant quasars, galaxies, black holes, and other objects
that are simply beyond the reach of small telescopes. The Hubble Space
Telescope, for instance, is not allowed to be pointed within about 25
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: An Intimate Look at the Night Sky
by Brian Charles Clark
Chet Raymo's An Intimate Look at the Night Sky contains beautiful and
realistic maps of the skies by season, and can be used, with a little
adjustment, anywhere in the northern hemisphere, but is especially
useful for those living in the northern U.S. and southern Canada.
Raymo is professor emeritus at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, and
An Intimate Look is precisely that: an astronomy teacher's loving gift
to his students.
There's something about astronomy and astronomers that inspires them
to write beautiful, poetic prose, and Raymo, through judicious use of
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Kate Remembered
Scott Berg is a superb biographer. I first read his biography of Max
Perkins (1971), the brilliant Scribner's editor (Hemingway, Scott
Fitzgerald); and then Goldwyn which was followed by Lindberg for which
he received the Pulitzer Prize. Entering a twenty-year relationship
with Katharine Hepburn she promised to tell him everything with one
stipulation: he could not publish until she had died-which she
eventually did, aged 96, on June 29th this year. Kate Remembered is
his 318-page loving tribute to Hepburn. It is a lighter but no less
effective biography. "She wanted it published as close to her death as
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Mr S: My Life with Frank Sinatra
by Christopher Ondaatje
This and other surprisingly personal anecdotes are revealed in another
sensational biography Mr S-this time by the black valet who served
Frank Sinatra for fifteen years-George Jacobs. He has co-authored this
tell-all expos of Sinatra with Bill Stadiem and is a ribald story of
Jacobs' stint for the singer after the latter won his Oscar in 1957
for his role in From Here to Eternity. Sinatra literally "stole" him
from Swifty Lazar, one of Hollywood's most powerful literary agents,
as soon as his career took an upward turn.
Sinatra couldn't stand being alone so Jacobs would spend hours phoning
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Letters from Prison: Felons Write about the Struggle for Life and Sanity behind Bars
by David Colterjohn
There have been two major narrative streams the "traditional" and
"revisionist" describing tales of modern penal punishment. To simplify
the difference, traditionalists tend to celebrate a steady march of
progress while the revisionists spell out a tale of woeful, abject
failure. Michel Foucault is by far the most influential of the
revisionists. Foucault argued that the modern practice of imprisonment
which began in the 19th Century was just one of several "Great
Incarcerations" taking place as emergent capitalism began to fashion a
new social order. Among many other ideas, Foucault introduced the idea
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Con Game: The Truth about CanadaÆs Prisons
by David Colterjohn
When John Howard was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1773,
no one expected him to take his job too seriously. The appointment was
meant as a political sinecure, but since the title included
responsibility for the Bedford jail, Howard decided that he ought to
inspect the premises. He was so appalled at what he saw that he
traveled all over the country on a hopeless quest, seeking a better
example for the local jailer to follow. The result was a landmark
book, The State of Prisons in England and Wales. First published in
1777, the book launched a movement for prison reform that has
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Justice Behind the Walls: Human Rights in Canadian Prisons
by David Colterjohn
In the early 1970s, shortly after Michael Jackson became a prisoners'
rights advocate, the watchtower guards at B.C. Penitentiary used to
track him in their gunsights as he made his way from the front gate to
the prison's notorious "Penthouse", or segregation unit. When he left
his photo ID at the front gate, it was returned to him scarred between
the eyes by cigarette burns. Back then, with prison discipline
enforced along military lines, the idea that prisoners might have
rights' was a novel one. Nosy lawyers who asked too many questions
about what happened behind the prison's bleak, grey walls could hardly
...
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| | Blue Pyramids
by Robert Priest
Jaguar Book Group $16.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1550225545
|
Book Review A Review of: Blue Pyramids: New and Selected Poems
by Robert Moore
Near the end of Robert Priest's Blue Pyramids: New and Selected Poems
you'll discover a prose-like narrative poem running to several pages
called "The New Opportunity". Ostensibly autobiographical, it tells a
cautionary tale of how a poet narrowly missed having his principles
compromised by a brewery that asked him to contribute material to a
new ad campaign: "This poem is not brought to you by Molson's," it
begins, "but it was close, believe me" Priest's speaker, with a family
to support and too long between work-in-progress grants and Canada
Council B grants, fancies himself a "new knight" being "tested by the
...
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|  | Helix
by John Steffler
Vehicule $16 Paperback
ISBN: 1550651609
|
Book Review A Review of: Helix: New and Selected Poems
by Robert Moore
In "Saint Laurence's Tears", the first poem in John Steffler's Helix:
New and Selected Poems, the speaker and his sister are remembered
lying on their backs on "the August earth of Ontario" looking up into
the night sky. From this premise Steffler proceeds to develop a
lyrical meditation on time and place as categories of being, on the
immanence of death, and on the role played by the past-both private
and social history-as the nominal seat of identity. Situating itself
at the vanishing point in a complex field of forces, the poem uses the
"star-showering night" to mirror the "ocean of loam so many had sailed
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
by Andrew Steinmetz
After Auschwitz there can be no art
-Theodore Adorno
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a love story set in Rwanda during
the April 1994 genocide. True to formula, this final solution' of the
machete and club was organized and implemented according to plan: in
just 100 days, the mass killing of the Tutsi minority by the Hutu
majority claimed 800,000 lives. Early on, one Rwandan character in the
novel intones:
"The world has known the scientific Holocaust, cold, technological, a
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Mermaid of Paris
by Michael Greenstein
Cary Fagan never steps in the same river twice: The Mermaid of Paris,
his fourth novel, brims with history and surprises from 1900. As
inventive as his protagonist Henry Church, Fagan recreates a period
piece, unabashedly indebted to Turgenev and Doctorow, among others.
Set initially in small-town Ontario, the novel moves at a brisk pace,
beginning with the opening bicycle sequence, which features one of
Henry's inventions.
Cyclical and seasonal, the novel opens in the spring of 1900 with an
idyllic scene in rural Ontario. Henry speeds across his country lawn
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Way The Crow Flies
by Clara Thomas
Ann-Marie MacDonald's second novel has been published with press
ballyhoo that surpasses anything hitherto accorded a Canadian novel.
Her first success, Fall on Your Knees, was both well deserved and
remarkable, its sales enhanced immeasurably by its later choice as an
"Oprah" book. MacDonald herself is both wonderfully photogenic and
intelligently articulate about her writing aims and methods, ensuring
the attractive readability of her many interviews. All of these
factors, climaxing in a Giller nomination, combine to heighten a
reader's expectations almost beyond the possibility of fulfilment
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: River of the Brokenhearted
by Cynthia Sugars
Not so long ago, in one of my English classes at the University of
Ottawa, I broached the subject of taboos: "Is there anything anymore
that we consider to be taboo?" After a long silence, one person
tentatively put up her hand. "If there is anything, it's probably
sincerity," she responded. This was one of those eureka moments that
one sometimes has when teaching. While this wasn't the response I'd
had in mind, the student was absolutely right. It is no longer cool to
care. The Ivory Tower meets Joe Millionaire. This may be all the more
true for a teacher of Canadian culture. Margaret Atwood's call to arms
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Island Walkers
by John Ayre
In an article in Harrowsmith ten years ago on his hometown Paris,
Ontario, John Bemrose admitted he has been haunted since childhood by
a two-volume local history by Don Smith. It was here that he
understood that the process of regarding the past was not really
intellectual but overwhelmingly emotional and imaginative. With a
romantic florish, Bemrose suggested that ideally the end of historical
study was to discover "faces in the hills, voices in the leaves."
Certainly a place's identity should start with a resurrection of its
geniuses, its most unusual people. For Bemrose, there were two
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|  | Sixpence House
by Paul Collins
Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services $35.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1582342849
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Book Review A Review of: Sixpence House - Lost In a Town of Books
by Michael Hanlon
Imagine, a whole town built on books. And not just on books but on
bibliomania. As computer games start to outnumber reading materials in
some homes, it's comforting to know that somewhere out there, in
Wales, in fact, is a place where books-many of them old, tattered,
obscure, some unreadable even-are revered.
Paul Collins loves Hay-on-Wye, he tells us almost at the outset of
Sixpence House. What bibliomaniac, or even mere bibliophile, wouldn't?
It is, he intones in italics, the Town of Books.
Consider: it has some "fifteen hundred inhabitants, five churches,
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|  | Three Novellas
by Thomas Bernhard
University of Chicago Press $31.46 Hardcover
ISBN: 0226044327
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Book Review A Review of: Three Novellas
by Jeff Bursey
The Austrian writer, Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), has created
controversy in his homeland. Right-wingers protested his last play,
Heldenplatz (1988), its English translator relates, by depositing
"horse manure in front of the theater" on opening night. Earlier, a
Minister of Culture and Education had implied Bernhard was mad. Though
he is invoked with admiration by the unnamed narrator in William
Gaddis's Agap Agape (2002), his writings are insufficiently known to
English readers. Three Novellas is not a major work, unlike Concrete
and Wittgenstein's Nephew, but it does present an early version of the
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| | Book Review A Review of: Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada
by Ibi Kaslik
Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada is an appropriately
titled juicy new short story collection from the East Coast edited by
Lynn Coady. Coady's causticly humourous introduction discusses the
romanticization and commodification of Atlantic culture. Coady begs
the question: What happens if you feel estranged from your people and
place? What if the place you're from is the cutest place in North
America, home of red pigtails and wooden lobster traps? Coady, who has
explored and criticized the myth of the charming Atlantic home in her
own stories and novels, remarks on the downside of coming from a
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| | Book Review A Review of: From the Far Side of the River
by Richard Harvor
My late father-in-law was an avid (read: fanatical) fly-fisherman
(salmon); his most frequent query in my direction-a query which
persisted for years after we had first met-was "Do you fish?" It
seemed less a question than a proposal, posited offer, conceivable
induction into an elite, privileged club. A club that required waking
up at ungodly hours in godforsaken places and placing oneself
(suitably suited, armored in rubber) in goddamned cold water for the
"pleasure" of battling coquettish and/or hostile tiny-brained slabs of
flesh into submission.
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| | Book Review A Review of: Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy
by Douglas Brown
"Don't lower [] your reputation and the magazine's by reviewing that
moron's new edition of his garbage book. Read Levon Helm's This
Wheel's On Fire instead." So goes the unsolicited e-mail rant of a
long-time Band associate who'd learned I intended to do a piece on
Hoskyns' Across The Great Divide. The reaction seems odd. After all,
the British-born Hoskyns is a notable and sympathetic writer on
American popular music, and his book is an authoritative and
much-needed study that makes great claims for its subject. Moreover,
the book was clearly inspired by Hoskyns' devoted affection for The
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|  | Beachcomber
by Karen Robards
Thorndike Press $41.46 Hardcover
ISBN: 0786256540
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Book Review A Review of: Land of the Living
by Des McNally
When convinced that a novel deserves superlatives, I have always
chosen restraint, supposing it is kinder, to those books that follow,
not to set the bar too high. On the other hand, it is unfair not to
acknowledge the great enjoyment derived from reading a fascinating
thriller.
With the first 40 or so pages, Nicci French plunges the reader into a
situation filled with suspense and terror. Abbie Devereaux, an
attractive 25-year-old awakens to her worst nightmare in a dank,
darkened room. Her head is hooded, her neck restrained by wire
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|  | Secret Father
by James Carroll
Thomas Allen $36.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0618152849
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Book Review A Review of: Secret Father
by Des McNally
This is an elegant novel, the first paragraph of which had this reader
eagerly anticipating a narrative that would draw me into the author's
near scholarly approach to fiction.
The story is set mostly in Berlin, just prior to the construction of
the infamous Wall. We are quickly introduced to Paul Montgomery, a
successful international banker and true American capitalist,
benefiting from the reconstruction of post World War II Germany.
Living with him in Frankfurt, following the tragic death of his
disturbed mother, is Michael, his seventeen-year-old Polio-stricken
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Delicate Storm
by Des McNally
It's foggy, it's ghostly, it's raining, a dismal January in Algonquin
Bay, Northern Ontario, and Nigel Blunt has already convinced me that
it may be a nice place to visit, but that I wouldn't want to live
there. Another reason for my reluctance to relocate is the dismembered
body discovered strewn throughout the woods on which bears have dined
"al fresco." The body parts turn out to be those of an American whose
identity proves to be an enigma. Blunt's hero, Detective John
Cardinal, is assigned to find, not just the perpetrator of the crime
but also his motive, and the true identity of the victim.
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|  | The Dwelling
by Susie Moloney
Random House Canada $35.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0679312161
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Book Review A Review of: The Dwelling
by Des McNally
Susie Moloney didn't choose an original premise for her third
offering, The Dwelling. The author resurrects the "old haunted house"
theme, but her approach is clever, and the star of her tale is a
diverse cast of characters and not just the almost alive, brooding and
disturbing house at 362 Belisle Street.
What connects the different parts of the novel is Glenn Darnley, a
Real Estate Agent who is returning to work after the death of her
husband. Like any good agent, Darnley first takes the reader on a
showing of the house, pointing out its features with obvious
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|  | Bare Bones
by Kathy Reichs
Simon & Schuster Canada $37.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0743233468
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Book Review A Review of: Bare Bones
by Des McNally
This sixth novel in the Temperance Brennan series opens at a sprightly
pace. In fact, so pacy are the early chapters, that when the author
turns to introducing and developing her characters, the narrative
slows considerably, like changing from fourth gear to first in one
movement.
Set in North Carolina, this mystery includes many friends that Reich's
readers are familiar with: Andrew Ryan our heroine's current flame,
Katy her daughter, and of course her pet dog and cat, Boyd and Birdie,
to whom Brennan often confides her most secret thoughts.
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|  | Nature Via Nurture
by Matt Ridley
Harper Collins Canada Ltd. $36.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0002006634
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Book Review A Review of: Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human
by Rob Thomas
Nature Via Nurture is almost the type of book that lets you feel smart
without making you do too much work. Matt Ridley's style is
conversational, his arguments are simple and persuasive and he has
mastered that tricky balance-game of making a complex subject
understandable and entertaining for the average reader. His prose,
peppered with quips and literary illusions, bears comparison to the
science prose stylings of Oliver Sacks, Stephen Jay Gould or even
Daniel Dennett.
Nature Via Nurture isn't a textbook, nor is it a "made-simple" book.
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Centaur in the Garden
by Eric Miller
Before I address the substance of Moacyr Scliar's novel, which was
originally published in Portuguese in 1980, I must first regretfully
register a complaint about the format of the present paperback
edition. The margins of the pages are so tight that to read the words
as they approached or departed from the spine of the book became for
me an operation too much like physically digging for something lodged
in a resistant medium. The Centaur in the Garden, as its title
suggests, concerns itself with a case of metamorphosis. The book
transformed me into an anxious reader: ocular toil partially
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson
by Peter O'Brien
The Group of Seven and its attendant mythologies continues to define
Canada and Canadian art, whether we wish it or not. "Enough!" you
might say. We've had enough of their lush trees,tumbling hillsides and
iconic mountains. Enough of their images on calendars, of their
greeting card simplicity, of their omnipresence.
In fact, there are still many paintings by the Group that are not
generally known to the public, worthy biographies still waiting to be
written on most of the members, and not yet a catalogue raisonne that
has been produced on any one of them. There are also many art
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
by Michael Kinsella
Like Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (2003)-an account of the
volcanic eruption of 1883 and its geological, political, artistic and
religious reverberations in the present day-Simon Winchester's earlier
success The Professor and the Madman (1999) might be described as a
book on subterranean forces. Even though the human scale and its tale
of small individual endeavours is dwarfed by seismic shifts, rifts and
the greatest explosion in recorded human history, there is perhaps
something more compelling about the smaller intimacies of this earlier
story.
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| | Book Review A Review of: Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism
by Gwen Nowak
Douglas Rushkoff is a dreamer. His vision of the night' is one of
himself surfing on the great ocean of Jewish history, mythology,
theology and commentary. The sea is turbulent. From his vantage point,
riding the waves, Rushkoff can see a cartographer on shore studying a
map of the same ocean, trying to chart the way to the New Jerusalem.
The cartographer is institutional Judaism. Rushkoff shouts to him from
across the roaring waves: "Your map won't work in these conditions.
Let me show you the way." The cartographer isn't listening.
Rushkoff's dream is generated by a parable that Rushkoff tells midway
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| | Book Review A Review of: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice
by Jeremy Lott
The last few years have not been kind to the American arm of the
Catholic Church. Aggressive reporting by the Boston Globe exposed
Cardinal Bernard Law as a prevaricator, a bully, and a protector of
sexually abusive clerics. The success of the Globe prompted
journalists across the country to dig into the histories of the local
white collar set. Many of these excavations uncovered skeletons. By
the time The New Anti-Catholicism went to press, bishops in Boston,
Milwaukee and Florida had resigned over accusations that they
mishandled what one newsroom editor ingeniously dubbed the "pedophile
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| | Book Review A Review of: Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe
by Olga Stein
What a wonder is the universe, and what a privilege it is to peer into
its depths-to witness events removed from us by billions of lights
years of space and time. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the
photos which comprise Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe are a
testament to both the wondrous technology that equips this
image-collecting satellite and the majesty of a universe we are now,
more than ever, capable of seeing and understanding. What is there to
see and marvel at? The sheer vastness of the cosmos, the magnitude of
the forces coursing through it; forces that trigger reactions powerful
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|  | Balthus
by Stanislas Klossowski De Rola
Harry N. Abrams $29.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0810921197
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Book Review A Review of: Balthus: Stanislas Klossowski de Rola
by Olga Stein
Son of a Polish art historian, Erich Klossowski, and a Polish Jewish
woman, Elizabeth (also known as Baladine) Dorothea, Balthazar
(1908-2001) was exposed to artists and their work at an early age at
his parents' salon in Paris. Later in life he came to insist on the
title Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola. The Count' part remains
questionable, especially since the artist had a penchant and talent
for self-reinvention, but he did come to inhabit the Grand Chalet in
Rossinire, situated between Gstaad and Montreux (Swiss Alps), an
aristocratic dwelling which bolstered his claim to noble ancestry, and
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| | Book Review A Review of: Sports: The Complete Visual Reference
by Olga Stein
Whether you're a serious athlete, a dabbler, or someone who likes to
watch sports on tv, you'll appreciate this beautiful book. Containing
essential information about 120 sports, organized within 19 categories
(Track and Field, Gymnastics, Strength, Aquatic, Nautical, Equestrian,
Precision and Accuracy, Multidisciplinary, Ice Sports, Snow Sports,
Mountain Sports, Aerial Sports, Ball Sports [small ball], Ball Sports
[large ball], Racket, Combat, Sports on Wheels, Motor Sports, and
Bodybuilding) the book packs volumes of visuals and text into its 365
illustrated pages. An index listing sports, terminology, movements or
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