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Book Reviews in March 2005 Issue

The Master
by Colm Toibin

McClelland & Stewart $34.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0771085826
Book Review
A Review of: The Master
by Gerald Lynch
Joining the likes of Conor Cruise O'Brien, Seamus Heaney and John Banville, Colm Tibn has emerged over the past decade as one of Ireland's leading literary figures. Prolific cultural journalist, editor, essayist, and author of a number of highly praised non-fiction books, he has also written five superbly wrought novels featuring an impressive range of characters in international settings. If nothing else-and there is much else-he shows that a new generation of Irish novelists is not writing only about the nightmare of Irish history. Those blessed with Colm Tibn's gifts and industry are free to imagine ...
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The Big Why
by Michael Winter

House of Anansi Press $36 Hardcover
ISBN: 0887841880
Book Review
A Review of: The Big Why
by Lisa Salem-Wiseman
Michael Winter's 2000 novel, This All Happened, chronicled the life of a young writer named Gabriel English as he attempted to write a historical novel about the year that Rockwell Kent, the illustrator of Moby Dick, spent in Brigus Newfoundland. Kent, born and formally educated as an artist in New York City, moved first to Moneghan Island, Maine (1905), and then Brigus (1914), in search of adventure and raw landscapes to paint. The Arctic explorer Bob Bartlett was also living in Brigus, and it was a meeting with him that had led Kent to the seaside community. After just sixteen months in Newfoundland, he ...
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Running in Prospect Cemetery
by Susan Glickman

Vehicule Press $16 Paperback
ISBN: 155065182X
Book Review
A Review of: Running In Prospect Cemetery: New and Selected Poems
by Kevin Higgins
>From the word go Susan Glickman's Running In Prospect Cemetery: New and Selected Poems is a collection which has obviously come from a different Canada entirely. Glickman was born in Montreal, but now lives in Toronto. The book includes twenty-one new poems as well as an extensive selection of poems from four previous collections. Whereas Brent MacLaine's poems are often about solitary figures in a very particular landscape; Glickman's are dominated by the sort of domestic urban drama which could happen almost anywhere, and does. In "The Country Of The Old People"-a poem from her first collection, which was ...
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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 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: "History, ...
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Bad Latitudes
by Al Pope

Turnstone Press $18.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0888012934
Book Review
A Review of: Bad Latitudes
by W.P. Kinsella
A beautiful cover of a snarling Husky by Tetro Design highlights this female coming-of-age novel set in the Yukon. In the process of moving from Ontario to the Yukon, 21-year-old Connie hitches a ride toward Whitehorse, only to intervene in a domestic brawl when her ride insists on visiting friends. She stabs Dale, the brutish husband, not seriously, but he lets it be known that he seeks revenge and Connie tries to escape him by moving further into the wilderness. She becomes friends with a woman trapper named Rowan who happens to be gay, and learns about hardscrabble living in winter in the wilds of the Yukon. ...
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The Border Guards
by Mark Sinnett

Harper Collins Canada $24.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0002005042
Book Review
A Review of: The Border Guards
by W.P. Kinsella
This is another page-turner set in Thousand Islands area of Southern Ontario, sort of a second tier crime-adventure novel. Tim Hollins is a young restaurant manager, whose father, Michael Hollins, was a powerful financier and politician, until his tragic death in a car accident. The story opens as Tim and his girlfriend escape the restaurant into the winter wilderness dodging a hitman. The tale flashes back a month. Tim is reluctantly beginning to investigate his father's supposedly accidental death, and, of course, nothing is quite as it seems. There is a spy, a Russian mobster, a former British ...
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The Naked Island
by Bryna Wasserman

Key Porter Books $24.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1552636380
Book Review
A Review of: The Naked Island
by W.P. Kinsella
Another delightful cover is wasted on this dog's breakfast of a novel, full of self-indulgent, pretentious, Creative Writing 101 nonsense. The set up is promising, with ancient spirits connecting with contemporary humans, and the novel narrated by an Ontario man who committed suicide. The main character is Rachel Gold, a young Ontario woman, rich, spoiled, and somewhat ditzy. She has a worthless, druggie boyfriend who may or may not have betrayed her with her sister, which is enough for her claim that she has stopped speaking, but there is no evidence that she ever shuts up. I can see the author's brain working, ...
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Sunday Afternoon
by David Elias

COTEAU BOOKS $19.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1550503014
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 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and just across the American border the US Military are 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 ...
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The Goddess and the Bull : Catalhoyuk: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization
by Michael Balter

Free Press $39 Hardcover
ISBN: 0743243609
Book Review
A Review of: The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk: An Archeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization
by Greg Gatenby
Michael Balter has written the most informative and the most engaging book on an archeological project I have ever read. Given that my reading and my interest in this field over the decades have centered on Greek and Meso-American discoveries, I was prepared to merely skim a book about pre-literate Anatolian Turkey, long-regarded as hillbilly country by the pioneers of archeology (one of whom was Agatha Christie's husband). The Goddess And The Bull, though, is a brilliant history of the digs-and the diggers-at one of the oldest cities in the world which also happens to be one of the oldest archeological sites ...
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The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
by Matthew Hart

Walker & Company $30.2 Hardcover
ISBN: 0802714269
Book Review
A Review of: The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
by Greg Gatenby
Strangely, while I wasn't looking all that much forward to reading Balter's book over the holiday season, I was really looking forward to devouring The Irish Game: A True History of Crime and Art by the UK journalist Matthew Hart. Like most of my acquaintances, I take a head-shaking, perverse fascination in art heists and the effrontery of the crooks so bold as to take objects which, by their nature, belong to all of us. Certainly the 1986 theft of masterpieces worth millions of dollars from Russborough House near Dublin in Ireland was a news story around the planet, and it is this theft with which Hart begins ...
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Yours in Food, John Baldessari
by John Baldessari

Princeton Architectural Press $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1568984952
Book Review
A Review of: Yours in Food
by Greg Gatenby
Cookbooks tend to be big sellers at Christmas time, but one which appears to have evaded the radar of food buyers-and of food-book reviewers-is Yours In Food. The book has been put together by John Baldessari, one of the leading visual artists in America, best known for his photography and conceptual art. Here he has assembled a number of images of dining, taken by other photographers in various decades of the twentieth century, and has cropped them, or painted them, or modified them in some way so as to make them his own. Since this is leading-edge work in the visual arts, it won't be to the common taste. ...
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The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters Between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-73
by John Saumarez, Editor Smith

Frances Lincoln $30.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0711224528
Book Review
A Review of: The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters Between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-1973
by Greg Gatenby
Finally, bibliophiles should note the publication of The Bookshop At 10 Curzon Street: Letters Between Nancy Mitford And Heywood Hill 1952-1973. Those simply looking for a reprise of 84 Charing Cross Road will be disappointed because the newer title lacks the innocence of the earlier-still, it has other charms. Mitford was a popular novelist in her day, but few knew that as a young woman she had worked as a general dogsbody in one of the more famous London bookshops of the twentieth century. Following WWII she moved to France, and it is her correspondence from the Continent with her ex-boss on Curzon Street ...
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Sounding Off
by Ted Staunton

Fitzhenry & Whiteside $12.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0889952930
Book Review
A Review of: Sounding Off
by O.R. Melling
"This is the funniest book I have ever read!" declared my teen reader. Despite her words, my heart sank at the sight of "zits" in the first sentence. Being an airy fairy lover of lyrical prose, I have never liked graphically-written realistic fiction, especially that aimed at teens and their problems. Still, my daughter's assurance of good fun ahead was bolstered by Staunton's renown as a writer of hilarious humour for children. Would his first work for an older readership match up? It wasn't long before I was laughing out loud. Our hero is ...
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The Report Card
by Andrew Clements

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing $23.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0689845154
Book Review
A Review of: The Report Card
by Peter Yan
In Andrew Clements's latest children's book, the new class of proletariats are a class of fifth graders, inspired by a kid genius named Nora Rowley, with an IQ of 188, who protest rote learning and testing by purposely getting zeroes on all their tests, leading up to a climactic confrontation between school administration, parents and students. Clements cleverly captures school life, the backroom school politics, the neuroses evoked by the ritual of the report card, and the difficulty of socializing in school, especially for exceptional ...
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The Pepins and Their Problems
by Polly Horvath

Douglas & McIntyre $13.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0888996330
Book Review
A Review of: The Pepins and their Problems
by Tim McGrenere
In Polly Horvath's latest book for young readers (ages 8-12 in this case), we're thrown headlong into the world of the Pepins, an eccentric family with talkative pets, who experience a series of problems-toads live in their shoes, the family gets trapped on the roof, the cow gives lemonade instead of milk, etc. In each chapter the author solicits the help of her "dear readers" to psychically send her solutions, which she can receive through her "unusually large" antennae. She displays and debates the merits of these "solutions", which come from such far-flung places as Witless Bay, Nova Scotia and ...
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The Spiderwick Chronicles (Boxed Set) : The Field Guide; The Seeing Stone; Lucinda's Secret; The Ironwood Tree; The Wrath of Mulgrath
by Tony DiTerlizzi, Holly Black

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing $57.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0689040342
Book Review
A Review of: The Spiderwick Chronicles (Boxed Set): The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, LucindaÆs Secret, The Ironwood Tree, The Wrath of Mulgarath
by Olga Stein
This set of five books in which nine-year-old twin boys, Jared and Simon, and their thirteen-year-old tomboy sister Mallory, discover a magical but dangerous world in their own house and the woods surrounding it, is a wonderful reading experience for kids seven to ten years of age. Solid writing, great character and plot development, a realistic portrayal of the Grace family still shaken by the parents' recent divorce, combined with quality illustrations of the children and the faerie-world creatures they encounter, turn this series into old-fashioned kids lit-C.S. Lewis or K. Rowling for the very young ...
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Look for Me
by Edeet Ravel

Random House Canada $29.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 067931296X
Book Review
A Review of: Look for Me
by Gwen Nowak
Edeet Ravel loves to write. Maybe she lives to write. Ravel claims that even though she has been writing since she was 12 she has never experienced writers' block. Now 59, she has, not surprisingly, produced a large opus, including novels, prose poems, a comic cartoon book, and children's stories. More surprisingly, she has rarely submitted her work to a publisher, even though she received early affirmation of her talent, starting at age 16, with best short story in Canada by a high school student, best piece [a prose poem] by a university graduate in Canada, and the Norma Epstein National Fiction ...
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Passion
by Jude Morgan

McArthur & Co / Headline Trade $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0755304020
Book Review
A Review of: Passion
by Cindy MacKenzie
In this weighty page-turner of a novel, British author Jude Morgan plunges us into the tumultuous world of the Romantic Era. We learn of the great poets of the period-Keats, Byron, and Shelley-from the perspective of the four passionate, intelligent, and daring women who loved them. The novel's extensive cast of characters also includes a network of the intellectuals and artists of the period, from Coleridge and Joseph Severn to Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. Passion is indeed an appropriately descriptive title, for Morgan's compelling novel is an account of the upheavals in life and love experienced by these ...
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Conspirators
by Michael Andre Bernstein

Harper Collins Canada $36.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0002005700
Book Review
A Review of: Conspirators
by Paul Butler
The various plot lines of Michael Andr Bernstein's historical novel, Conspirators, weave like the strands of a delicate web through the interconnected social strata of an unnamed eastern province of the Austrian Empire. Between the novel's opening "Overture" and its closing "Coda", both set in 1925, the main story begins in the winter of 1912-13 and ends in the spring of 1914. Disparate social classes-aristocratic Christians, working-class trade union activists, wealthy Jews, and permanently embittered lower middle-class Jews-form a volatile tapestry against which Bernstein's ...
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An Ordinary Star
by Carole Giangrande

Cormorant Books $29.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1896951562
Book Review
A Review of: An Ordinary Star
by Heather Birrell
An Ordinary Star maps a life as one might chart the night sky-seeking out known markers and patterns even as the enormity of the project becomes overwhelmingly clear. Carole Giangrande's second novel (her first, A Forest Burning, was very well received ) opens with the elderly Sofia Fiore slipping and hitting her head on the edge of the bathtub. Already suffering from an unnamed blood disease, Sofia is hospitalized for her head injury, the result of a clot on the brain. During her hospital stay, she is inundated by memories of her childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and begins to try to parse and ...
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Under the North Star
by V+ñin+¦ Linna

Aspasia Books $28 Paperback
ISBN: 0968588166
Book Review
A Review of: Under the North Star
by Ernest Hekkanen
Probably I'm a little biased, being of Finnish ancestry. However, it seems to me that the literature of Finland is now stepping quite firmly onto the world's stage and, furthermore, it is doing so from right here in Canada, where it has been given a considerable shove from the wings by Aspasia Books of Beaverton, Ontario. Aspasia Books is the brainchild of Brje Vhmki, a professor of Finnish Studies at the University of Toronto. Vhmki's mandate is to make Finnish literature available in English, and there is little doubt in my mind that he is well on his way to achieving his aim, after ...
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Magic Seeds
by V.S. Naipaul

Knopf Canada $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0676975550
Book Review
A Review of: Magic Seeds
by Steven W. Beattie
Magic Seeds, by the 2001 Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, is a dreadful book. There. I've said it. And while such a brash, admittedly confrontational assertion is likely to result in readers sympathetic to Sir Vidia's oeuvre-to say nothing of the author himself-lining up to have me horsewhipped, or at the very least castigated for what they are sure to see as the basest kind of literary calumny, I can find no more polite or dignified way of expressing myself. The novel, narrated in a haughty, supercilious manner that seems to embrace misanthropy and a wholesale disgust for the people who appear in it, is an ...
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White Gloves of the Doorman Works of Leon Rooke
by Branko Gorjup

McArthur & Co / Exile (Tp, Hc) $34.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1550966111
Book Review
A Review of: Edited by Branko Gorjup
by Michael Harris
Leon Rooke's body of work, six novels and seventeen story collections, undergoes cross-examination in Branko Gorjup's fastidious and idiosyncratic retrospective, White Gloves of the Doorman. Rooke's oeuvre, which many have found impossible to describe, is finely (finally) mapped. Along with the broader how-does-it-work type of questions, Gorjup asks what has weighed down Rooke's advancement into Can Lit's hall of fame. White Gloves poses the question and remedy in one-here is a volume of sincere, recuperative criticism. Twenty-seven Rooke-lovers in all-novelists, poets, academics-are ...
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History of the Book in Canada-Vol. 1
by EFleming/Gallichan/Lamond

University Of Toronto Press $75 Hardcover
ISBN: 0802089437
Book Review
A Review of: History of the Book in Canada, Volume One: Beginnings to 1840
by Cynthia Sugars
The advent of Gutenberg's printing press neatly coincided with early explorers' travels to North America in search of new empires. John Cabot's landing at Cape Breton and Newfoundland in the late 1400s, and Jacques Cartier's voyages to the Eastern seaboard of upper North America beginning in 1534, occurred less than a century after Gutenberg's invention of movable type, an invention which was to revolutionize the role of print in human social networks forever after. While the fur trade is considered by many to be the definitive event of Canada's past, what Franois Melanon, in this collection, dubs ...
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Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion, and Power
by Peter C. Newman

Douglas Gibson Books $42.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0771067925
Book Review
A Review of: Here be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power
by Clara Thomas
In his epilogue, "Child of the Century" Peter Newman attempts an understanding of his often hectic, work- and fame-obsessed life: "I was in search of a hero alright. But the hero, I blush to admit, was me....The not inconsiderable task I set for myself was not only to search for heroes in my adopted Canada, but to become one of them." One cannot doubt his statement or his resolve. From the spoiled only child of a wealthy and influential Jewish family in Czechoslovakia, to, in 1940, a refugee in Canada, with his life and his way to make in a strange land, he had a burning ambition and the ability to achieve ...
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This Hour Has Seven Decades
by Patrick Watson

McArthur & Company $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1552784401
Book Review
A Review of: This Hour Has Seven Decades
by Clara Thomas
Patrick Watson gives the reader due warning of his intentions: "While I have done extensive research in my own journals, and in CBC and other archives (especially regarding chronology), the Life I have written here is the life that I remember." To characterize its author requires many words: brave, adventurous, creative, gallant are some of them. So are maverick and loose canon. Above all he is unremittingly enthusiastic, with a voracious curiosity and zest for experience and a total commitment to and involvement in all his many ventures. He makes his youth into a Boy's Own Annual Adventure story, complete ...
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The End: Hamburg 1943
by Hans Erich Nossack

Univ. of Chicago Press $26.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0226595560
Book Review
A Review of: The End: Hamburg 1943
by Jeff Bursey
This economical memoir about the July 1943 bombing of Hamburg, referred to as Operation Gomorrah by the Allies, is a work of horrifying beauty. Nossack displays an acute sensitivity about how the citizens responded to the attack, yet he never descends into vulgar sentiments or angry judgments. Joel Agee's concise introduction tells how this work, a classic in Germany since its publication in 1948, proved uninteresting to English-language publishers. He had translated it partly for his own reasons, reflecting that he was drawn back to it during the Vietnam war because of its "windless calm," a sharp and ...
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It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, Cef: 1916-1919
by Bruce Cane

Dundurn Press $35 Hardcover
ISBN: 1550025120
Book Review
A Review of: It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, Canadian Expeditionary Force: 1916-1919
by James Roots
"Little did I think when we were young, and all things around us were gay, that some fine day our monarch would say, it's up to every person to do his duty. After living for so many years in peace and happiness, it was cruel for such a war between so many countries to start. Little did we think that it would mean the calling of so many human beings together to be slaughtered like sheep for the sake of a few individuals who thought they could conquer the world. Alas, they did not consider the individuals in the Colonies who were willing to aid the motherland." ...
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We're Not Dead Yet
by Milly Walsh, John Callan

Vanwell Publishing $20.07 Paperback
ISBN: 155125087X
Book Review
A Review of: WeÆre Not Dead Yet: The First World War Diary of Private Bert Cooke
by James Roots
"Little did I think when we were young, and all things around us were gay, that some fine day our monarch would say, it's up to every person to do his duty. After living for so many years in peace and happiness, it was cruel for such a war between so many countries to start. Little did we think that it would mean the calling of so many human beings together to be slaughtered like sheep for the sake of a few individuals who thought they could conquer the world. Alas, they did not consider the individuals in the Colonies who were willing to aid the motherland." ...
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Riding Into War
by James Robert Johnston

Goose Lane Editions/New Brunswick Military Heritage Project $14.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0864924127
Book Review
A Review of: Riding Into War: The Memoir of a Horse Transport Driver, 1916-1919
by James Roots
"Little did I think when we were young, and all things around us were gay, that some fine day our monarch would say, it's up to every person to do his duty. After living for so many years in peace and happiness, it was cruel for such a war between so many countries to start. Little did we think that it would mean the calling of so many human beings together to be slaughtered like sheep for the sake of a few individuals who thought they could conquer the world. Alas, they did not consider the individuals in the Colonies who were willing to aid the motherland." ...
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Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy
by David Stevenson

HarperCollins Canada / Basic Books $24.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0465081851
Book Review
A Review of: Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy
by James Roots
Suggestions that the real atrocity of World War One was its political and military ineptitude seem to trivialize the suffering of soldiers. In his massive Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, David Stevenson steers sweatily close to this danger. His thesis is that political factors, as much as doubtful military strategies, not only ignited the War but locked it into a stalemate before turning it into a long, drawn-out series of resolutions. It's a compelling, convincing approach, and he buttresses it with an absolutely staggering amount of both evidence and argument. The ...
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Hell's Corner: An Illustrated History of Canada's Great War, 1914-1918
by J. L. Granatstein

Douglas & McIntyre $50 Hardcover
ISBN: 1553650476
Book Review
A Review of: HellÆs Corner: An Illustrated History of CanadaÆs Great War 1914-1918
by James Roots
J. L. Granatstein hardly needs introduction, but if he did, he certainly accomplished it by publishing no fewer than four books in the past year (with two more coming out this spring). One senses that he can whip off two or three war books on any rainy afternoon not only because our war history is by now completely ingrained in his synapses, but also because he has the gift of writing brisk sentences. Even when he is wasting words, he is doing so at a refreshing sprint. With Hell's Corner: An Illustrated History of Canada's Great War 1914-1918, it takes him only about 150 pages of text to provide a ...
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World War I in Colour: the Definitive Illustrated History With Over 200 Remarkable Full Colourphotographs
by Charles Messenger

Ebury Press $50 Hardcover
ISBN: 0091897823
Book Review
A Review of: World War I In Colour: The Definitive Illustrated History With Over 200 Remarkable Full Colour Photographs
by James Roots
Britain's Nugus/Martin Productions set out to upend the perception that the Great War was fought in black and white by using digital scans to colourize about five and a half hours' worth of surviving movie footage. They then isolated 200 frames from the results and wrapped them around a serviceable text by Charles Messenger to produce World War One In Colour. While the technology has made some advances since Ted Turner performed colourized sacrilege on classic Hollywood movies some twenty years ago, it remains an awfully long way from producing something more than ...
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The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: the Story of Canada's Secret War
by Carol Off

Random House Canada $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0679312935
Book Review
A Review of: The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of CanadaÆs Secret War
by John Pepall
The flyleaf of The Ghosts of Medak Pocket tantalises: "Off introduces a group of Canadian soldiers who fought valiantly against the horrors of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and won. ....a unit of Canadian peacekeepers planted themselves between besieged Serbs and the advancing Croat army. The Canadians held their ground when attacked and engaged the Croats in the most intense combat Canadian forces had seen since the Korean War. After eighteen bloody hours, they stemmed the advance, saved the UN protected zone and ...
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Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canadas New Social Experiment
by Douglas Farrow, Dan Cere

Mcgill-Queens University Press $24.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0773528954
Book Review
A Review of: Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canada's New Social Experiment
by Martin Loney
The debate over same-sex marriage has been loud but less than sophisticated. Proponents have tried to betray their critics as intolerant bigots, eager to stomp on their human rights, but as the contributors to this collection eloquently demonstrate, there are powerful reasons to question the sudden rush to transform an ancient institution. Five years ago the House of Commons reaffirmed the traditional definition of marriage by a massive 216 to 55 majority. Darrel Reid and Janet Epp Buckingham, recall then Justice Minister Anne ...
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The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
by Sam Harris

Penguin $36 Hardcover
ISBN: 0393035158
Book Review
A Review of: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
by Matt Sturrock
Consider the following information, as supplied by Sam Harris in his book The End of Faith: In the most powerful nation in the world, a land of space programs, fibre optics, genome mapping, and open heart surgery, more than three-quarters of the populace believes that the Bible was, in fact, authored by God. Two-thirds believe in the existence of Satan. And nearly half takes "a literalist view of creation." (Which means, as Harris points out, that these people place the birth of the universe "2500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.") ...
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Jung: A Biography
by Deirdre Bair

Little Brown, USA $28.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0316159387
Book Review
A Review of: Jung, a Biography
by Hugh Graham
The maternal grandfather of the great psychologist, Carl G. Jung, had the habit of retiring to his study to talk with his dead wife, and a generation later, Jung's mother had regular encounters with spirits and visions. Imbued with this atmosphere since childhood, Jung, as a young medical student, chose psychiatry (in those days, around the turn of the century, the paranormal came under the rubric of psychology). His choice continued to be vindicated: one day, as he was studying, a table in the adjoining room split asunder of its own will, and another time, a bread knife spontaneously shattered. The ...
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Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador
by John Gimlette

Hutchinson $39.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0091795192
Book Review
A Review of: Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador
by Christopher Ondaatje
Annie Proulx's much acclaimed novel Shipping News won not only the 1993 National Book Award for Fiction but also the 1994 Pulitzer Prize. However, despite the author's skillful manipulation of her characters, together with her rather disturbing subjects (child molestation, incest, serial adultery and retardation), what really comes across in the otherwise exemplary book is her obvious distaste for her characters and her setting-Newfoundland. I sometimes felt a little uncomfortable reading the book. Now an exceptional piece of travel writing, Theatre of Fish, by John ...
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Continental Drifter
by Dave Cameron

Signature Editions $18.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1897109008
Book Review
A Review of: Continental Drifter
by Lynda Grace Philippsen
Prompted by that urge to roam and a desire to escape a confining relationship, the thirty-something author of Continental Drifter undertakes a journey-a diagonal swath across a continent from Dawson, Yukon, to Key West, Florida, by Greyhound. Yes, that's right, by bus. Although Dave Cameron is "groomed for the workplace" with a degree in journalism, he has an aversion to shaving, as well as work in its conventional sense. What he prefers to do is "meet a few personalities from the fringe and witness a few sublime scenes." In the author's words, "a harebrained scheme," but apparently not completely ...
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These Fields Were Rivers
by Brent MacLaine

University Of Toronto Press $19.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0864924046
Book Review
A Review of: These Fields Were Rivers
by Kevin Higgins
>From the cool green of its cover image to "the sea's sabotage of pasture" in the last stanza of "When Red Stone Falls" on page 104, Brent MacLaine's stark, well-mannered poems in These Fields Were Rivers are dominated by the landscape of the poet's native Prince Edward Island in a way that-to the outsider's eye at least-makes them seem quintessentially Canadian in a rather old-fashioned sense. At times, it's as if we are back in 1957, when Ralph Gustafson could happily claim in his introduction to The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse that: ...
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