| Book Review The Jaded Traveller
by Stanley Fogel
Terrified that we were about to be kidnapped, we moved more and more frantically
through what possibly were the same half dozen alleyways..
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction1
by Elizabeth Anthony
STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION against Aboriginal writers in Canada is not easily undone, insidiously entrenched as it is in a network of social systems whose scope exceeds the amending policies of any one publisher. With the appearance of Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada (NeWest, 294 pages, $13-95 paper), the editors Jeanne Perreault and Sylvia Vance have enabled bold and, to their credit, sometimes baldly unaffected Native voices to appear in print.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Poetry1
by Roger Burford Mason
THE BEST ENGLISH teacher I ever had took the mannered couplets of the Augustan satirists and made sense (and entertainment) of them for us with the analogy of birds` feathers: Horace ruffled them and Juvenal ripped them out. A confusion about the difference is manifest in Barbed Lyres: Canadian Venomous Verse (Key Porter, 128 pages, $16.95 cloth), a title that seems to suggest the subtlety of the barb is indistinguishable from the crude violence of venom.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Taking Their Place In The Narrative
by Adrienne Kertzer
Native writing, like Native activism, is now a force to be reckoned with
IN A CRITICAL article on Alexander Mackenzie first published in a double issue of Canadian Literature and now reprinted as part of Native Writers and Canadian Writing, Parker Duchemin describes how the knowledge accumulated by explorers such as Mackenzie functioned as "an essential element in the domination of the `subject races` by the European
imperial powers!` Then, as now, knowledge was an instrument of power, and
Read more...
|
| Book Review More Than A Word`S Worth
by Bruce Whiteman
STEPHEN SCOBIE`S two most recent collections of poems form a trilogy with his yet-to-be-published critical study of Bob Dylan, according to a note in Remains. An odd trio, perhaps, although Dylan does turn up from time to time in both poetry books.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Costumes And Dramas
by Gary Draper
TOO OFTEN THE PHRASE "historical fiction" means either costume drama, in which a dull narrative is tarred up in an exotic time and place, or fictionalized history, wherein a spoonful of fiction is used to make the history go down. Rita Donovan`s Dark jewels (Ragweed, 224 pages, $10.95 paper) is plainly historical fiction
Read more...
|
| Book Review Scents And Sensibilities
by Livingston Bird
The best travel writers let their noses lead the way
to a nice place to visit
THESE DAYS the cachet of the travel writer is greater than that of the novelist, since the latter must imagine Illyria while living in Orillia. Too often, however, the former goes to Valhalla (oh, I know it`s a one-way ticket) to write the prose equivalent of Kelowna (ditto, perhaps). Only obituarists write in a more formulaic way than travel writers. In the products of the latter the adjective has hegemony.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Meaning In The Cracks
by Charlene Diehl-Jones
Making a way through these texts will both challenge
and reward their readers
CHARLES O. HARTMAN suggests that a poem is an act of attention. And attention can assume widely various faces, as the books of poems that are now finding their places on helves across the country attest. Attention to the details of the world (or worlds) we inhabit or construct, attention to the subleties of articulation, of craft, attention to the materiality of language
Read more...
|
| Book Review Dramatic Developments
by Alan Filewod
New approaches to plays and performances are setting the stage
for a much transformed theatre scene
THE PARTICULAR NATURE of contemporary dramatic writing in Canada, which increasingly incorporates performance as an element of textuality, has resulted in the paradox that the plays that are published are not always representative of the work of the theatres from which they come.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction5
by Martin Dowding
GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS has a habit of blending genres and in his latest work, Dark Matter (Doubleday, 375 pages, $24-95 cloth), he successfully mixes the thriller and science fiction, with the emphasis on science. When a series of grisly murders occurs, the modus operandi of which is craniotomy, a smart but emotionally vulnerable Black female Los Angeles detective gets involved in the investigation.
Read more...
|
| Book Review New Kids On The Block
by Larry Scanlan
Great expectations are handsomely realized in five debut short-story collections
FIRST COLLECTIONS of short fiction inspire in this reader equal amounts of dread and anticipation. Faced with five such collections, one had better be blessed with ample curiosity to finish the task. But I am curious about these new houses on the literary block.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction1
by Norman Sigurdson
GWYN PAUL WILLIAMS seems to fancy himself as a bit of a Rod Setting for the `90s, to judge by the "Twilight Zone` quality of the I I short stories (and two poems, the less said about which the better) collected in Time Puddles (Gilt-Edged Dream Company, 198 pages, $12.00 paper). At its best Serling`s television series was eerie and provocative; at its worst it was pretentious, predictable, and preachy. Likewise Time Puddles, which is unfortunately more often at its worst than its best.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Urbane Canada
by Amy Friedman
JAN MORRIS HAS written more than two dozen volumes on various cities, from Hong Kong to Venice to Manhattan, and in City to City, she turns her keen but kind eye on 10 Canadian cities, from an outsider`s perspective. It is precisely that outsider`s viewpoint that is Morris`s strength.
Read more...
|
| Book Review World Without Men, Amen
by Terence M. Green
LET ME GET THIS out of the way immediately: I thought Margaret Atwood`s The Handmaid`s Tile was a fine novel, provocative and elegant. Alice Munro is a wonder; "Boys and Girls" is perceptive and poignant.
And I am a male.
There. Cards on the table.
But I don`t think that The Y Chromosome is a very good novel - not because of its subject matter, but because it tries to use the novel form and the science-fiction genre as vehicles for its subject matter.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Blazing The Trail
by Jim Christy
IN SKETCHING THE SCENES of first contact between the indigenous inhabitants of British Columbia and European explorers, George Woodcock underlines the "tragic separation" between them. Other writers have, of course, attempted to do the same but none has invested it with such poignancy and drama.
Read more...
|
| Book Review The Articulate Anger Of Phyllis Webb
by Cary Fagan
`I want to push my mind and imagination as far as I can,
because that`s where the discoveries are`
WEN PHYLLIS WEBB was invited to a feminist conference at York University in 1983, she stayed with her long-time friend Timothy Findley in Cannington, Ontario. In the evening they drove to York, where Webb read a new poem to the audience called "Leaning."
This moment is described in Timothy Findley`s memoir, Inside Memory.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Whose Voice Is It, Anyway?
A symposium on who should be speaking for whom
THE ISSUE OF appropriation of voice, of the use of the treasured contents and modes of expression of one culture by writers from another, is currently being intensely debated in the Canadian literary community. At stake are important questions of imaginative freedom and authorial responsibility central to the development of a truly multicultural national literature. Books in Canada asked a number of writers for their thoughts on the subject.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction2
by Gordon Phinn
DESPITE THE DISTINCTLY pot-boiler elements of Keith Harrison`s epistolary novel Eyemouth (Goose Lane, 333 pages, $16.95 paper), I found myself intrigued and sometimes enchanted by his characters` ability to weather the storms of their era (17904815). Opening in the east coast Scottish fishing village of Eyemouth and the nearby capital, Edinburgh, the story follows the adventures and tragedies of Gavin, Jimmy, and later Wilhelmina, as they communicate their concerns to loved ones left at home.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction3
by Rachel Rafelman
FEW PEOPLE IN CANADA have even heard of Ernst Barlach (18704938), A German sculptor of some renown in his native land between the two world wars. And it is unlikely that the publication of his memoirs, A Selftold Life (Penumbra, 103 pages, $14.95 paper), translated by Naomi Jackson Groves, will do much to further his reputation.
Barlach`s meandering, self-aggrandizing account of his early years strives mightily for poetical charm and philosophical weight, and broadly misses the mark on both.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Draught Dodging
by Jeff Walker
Fear of libel is publishing`s latest wind-chill factor
YOU DON`T KNOW me. Not like you know Bill Wilson (Address Unknown). He penned the classic "Poo River" which ranked sixth in This Magazine`s venomous verse competition and achieved anthological immortality in Key Porter`s book Barbed Lyres.
I and my little verses, on the other hand, have merely slithered back into the primordial ooze of bilious anonymity.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Ten Easy Books
by Sandra Martin
Black Moss and Collier Macmillan are introducing new series aimed
at active adolescent readers
WOMEN ABOUND in my family. My father had four sisters, my mother two, and I am one of four daughters. It never occurred to me that I would have anything but daughters. How surprising and illuminating it has been, therefore, to share my life with a son for the last 11 years. We are so alike and yet so different and nowhere is that more apparent than in the way we approach books.
Read more...
|
| Book Review In And Out Of Focus
by Lola Lemire Tostevin
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED in this collection of essays by 44 Canadian women writing in English were directed mainly by the questions the contributors were asked to address around feminism, race, class, sexual orientation, and theory. Presented with 44 essays on these issues, you look forward to a wide range of opinions and new perspectives on subjects that have seen a fair amount of print over the last 30 years. There`s no doubt that Language in Her Eye offers differing views.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Built To Last
by Barbara Mackay
THIS IS A great book for browsing. Sight Lines: Looking at Architecture and Design in Canada is a collection of Adele Freedman`s magazine and newspaper pieces, many from the "By Design" column she has written for the Globe and Mad since 1981.
Read more...
|
| Book Review The Lizzie Borden Syndrome
by Fraser Sutherland
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
("This be the Verse)
THUS PHILIP LARKIN on the topic of parental guidance. There is, of course, a way to limit the damage parents do us. We can always kill them.
Larkin`s grimly sardonic lines supply a fair summary of Elliott Leyton`s Sole Survivors: Children Who Murder Their Families.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction2
by Martin Dowding
WITH A CAREFUL HAND, Donald Akenson has written a piece of witty and entertaining historical speculation. The subject of At Face Value: The Life and Times of Eliza McCormack/John White (McGill-Queen`s, 245 pages, $24.95 cloth) is one Eliza McCormack, a supposedly female transvestite-prostitute who, through intelligence and good luck, lived as the Canadian Tory MP backbencher John White in the late 19th century.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction6
by Gideon Forman
THOROUGH AND PAINSTAKING In its detail, Lisa Gilad`s The Northern Route: An Ethnography of Refugee Experience (Institute of Social and Economic Research, 369 pages, $20.00 paper), charts the movement of refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Latin America, Iran, and Eastern Europe to Canada. The "northern route` refers to the passage through Gander, Newfoundland, a point of common disembarkation.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Right On The Map
by Christopher Moore
VOLUME I of The Historical Atlas of Canada was a big, expensive, scholarly work. Its pages often yielded meaning only after hard work with magnifying glass and scratch pad. Yet for thousands of readers, it was the Canadian book of the year in 1987 In strange and beautiful ways, it reconstructed the distant past (12,000 BC to AD 1800) in patterns that few readers had ever imagined.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Love At First Shrug
by Geoffrey Stevens
THE MAIN COMPLAINT among academics and book reviewers about this engrossing collaboration between Christina McCall and her husband, Stephen Clarkson, is that it is too, well, nonjudgemental. In the view of the critics - and the debate between the authors and the columnist Jeffrey Simpson spread to the editorial pages of the Globe and Mad Clarkson and McCall are not tough enough. They are too quick to defend their subject, too slow to condemn him.
This reaction was not unexpected.
Read more...
|
| Book Review The Oral Of The Story
by Elizabeth Anthony
ONCE UPON AN EGYPT and down through time the silence of the written page has come to us from Thoth, that dog-headed, baboon god who invented the pabulum of primary schooling, the three Rs. He thus incurred the displeasure not only of an eternity of six-to-twelvers but of his own King Thamus. Once upon papyrus, divined the King, word (being voice) will live haplessly ever after.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction4
by Michael Coren
PUBLISHING TRENDS are curious creatures. First cats, then golf, Nazis and the Holocaust, and now Canadian diplomacy. New York gossip is interesting enough, a slap in the face of an underling gives mild titillation, and at a pinch the humorous anecdotes of a former ambassador manage to provoke the odd chuckle. Sidney Freifeld`s Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service (Hounslow, 194 pages, $19.
Read more...
|
| Book Review A Public Performance
by Brian Fawcett
ONE OF MY first ventures beyond adolescence was to read the memoirs of older but still living writers. I wanted to see how they thought about themselves, and how they thought about writing. Among the memoirs that most impressed me were Albert Camus`s Notebooks, Cyril Connolly`s The Unquiet Gram and Enemies of Promise, and the various memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir. In different ways, they all filled me with delight, and still do.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Poetry2
by M. Travis Lane
PAT JASPER`S LATEST poetry collection, The Outlines of Our Warm Bodies (Goose Lane, 98 pages, $9.95 paper), is made up of the sort of material that used to be presented in the form of a familiar essay or epistolary diary:
It was the summer my first boyfriend kissed me under the lilacs next to the locomotive at the train station under a billion stars and I wasn`t sure if I liked it or not.
("Summer Song`)
The juncture of present and pastrecalled is jasper`s topic.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Poetry3
by Phil Hall
PERUVIAN OLD MAN, Arrowhead Vine, Mother-of-Thousands, Moneywort, Blue Passion Flower, Baby`s Tears - plants and poems with names like these make it easy to see how ripe botany is as a vehicle for investigations of history, imperialism, misogyny, language, religion, etc. Here`s how Richard Stevenson explains this in his introduction to Whatever It Is Plants Dream (Goose Lane, 65 pages, $9.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Way Out West
by Zoe Landale
I LEAN ACROSS the table trying to talk with Alma Lee, producer of the Vancouver International Writers` Festival, above the Hey, hey-a hey-a and heavy beat of native ceremonial drums. Two young women are doing a sound check for tonight`s First Nations Cabaret, although it seems to be developing into an impromptu concert. Brian Fawcett, who joined me when one of Lees staff dragged her off for the third time, may be smiling nicely at me, but I fear he`s smirking.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Polar Expeditions
by J. D. Carpenter
IN AUGUST 1979, David Halsey beached his canoe on the western shore of the St. Lawrence River at Tadoussac, concluding the final chapter of a two-and-a-half-year, 4,700, mile cross-Canada epic.
Read more...
|
| Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction7
pages, $16.95 paper) is a kind of spiritual autobiography.
Read more...
|
| Book Review First The Bad News
by Peter Trueman
ONE OF THE MAJOR problems facing environmentalists and anyone else determined to save the earth from its mutinously lethal two-legged inhabitants is that values have changed so sharply. A society that believed for more than a century in its right to information now believes it has a right to entertainment; and for worry-free escapism, tales of a ravaged ecology are just not in it with "The Simpsons" or even Scott Turow`s latest best seller.
Read more...
|
| Interviews Broadsides And Brickbats
by Daniel Richter
Mordecai Richler reminds us that culture doesn`t have to be good for you
MORDECAI RICHLER is one of Canada`s most celebrated authors. He has won two Governor General`s Awards: a joint award for the novel Cocksure and the essay collection Hunting Tigers Under Glass in 1968, and for the novel St. Urbain`s Horseman in 1971.
Read more...
|
