 Note from Editor Note from the Editor
by Olga Stein
As we wrap up for the summer, we leave you with an extra thick issue for your reading pleasure.The charming and mesmerizing raconteur, Josef Skvorecky, is our featured Great Author. The Czech-born writer has resided
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| Book Review Falstaff's Thin Man or the Tangled Bard of Our Imaginings
by Alexander Leggatt
Afew dates, a few documents, a scattering of contemporary references-in an age of tell-all biography, Shakespeare seems to offer slim pickings. Park Honan's method in Shakespeare: A Life is to work from what we know of the bard's
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| Book Review Retiring the Sacred Cow of Ideology
by Nella Cotrupi
Northrop Frye, one of Canada's outstanding intellectuals, was also an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada. Except for a brief and tortured stint in 1937 as a student minister in Saskatchewan (which he painstakingly documented in letters to
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| Book Review Darwin's Legacy - Inventing a Brave New World
by Ronald Sousa
No one scientist, goes the common lament, could keep up now with a single discipline, let alone with science as a whole. If there's an exception to this, John Maddox is it. After over twenty years as Editor of Nature, the world's leading science
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| Book Review Putting God Back on the Agenda
by Ray Robertson
In much the same pleasing interdisciplinary mode as his popular history of communications technologies, Spirit of the Web, Wade Rowland has combined travel memoir, medieval history, philosophical speculation, and technological reflection to give
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| Book Review Expedition into the Welter of Collecting Matter
by Jennifer Duncan
Annie Dillard is the author of ten books, including the Pulitzer prizewinning Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek, a memoir, An American Childhood, and the lit-major's bedside bible, Living by Fiction. Her latest, For the Time Being, is an elegant
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| Book Review Mother-Love
by Sharon Butala
Eliza Clark's first novel, Miss You Like Crazy (HarperCollins), was a headlong "road" book about a lovable, but slightly batty, young southern woman trying-as always in such novels-to find a place for herself in the world. Reading Miss You Like Crazy
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 | Bill Reid
by Doris Shadbolt,
pages $35 TP
ISBN: 0888946066
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Book Review Wunderkind of the Haida
by Stephanie Farrington
In a country struggling with issues of land claims and rights of self-government within aboriginal groups, it is impossible to publish a book on any aspect of Native life without making some sort of political statement, however subtle. The recent reissue
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| Book Review Excerpts from 'Two Murders in My Double Life'
That night, as we were driving home from Professor Kelly's party, another strange scene was played out...
It was shortly after midnight, and the night was standard horror-movie footage. Thunder, lightning, and ferocious wind.
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| Book Review Outing the Barbarians
by Robert Sibley
The lives of philosophers are usually quite dull, at least compared to those of rock stars and libidinous presidents. Immanuel Kant, for one, never left the German town of Königsberg where he was born. And his life was so regimented that the townspeople
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| Dyslexicon
by Stephen Cain,
80 pages $22.95 SP
ISBN: 1552450279
|  | Outside the Hat
by Gary Barwin,
pages $0 TC
ISBN: 1552450309
| | Fit to Print
by Karen MacCormack, Alan Halsey,
96 pages $35 TC
ISBN: 1552450317
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Book Review Haydn Intersections of Sense
by Paul Dutton
Poetry has long since come to be a chancy term, conveying radically different meanings to different people-from the hopelessly ignorant who expect it to rhyme, to the resolutely ultra-refined who insist that it be stripped of emotion and meaning. Between
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| Book Review Mexican Verse in Free Trade
by Martha Nandorfy
Where Words Like Monarchs Fly is a timely English translation of Mexican poetry spanning three generations of poets whose work has not been readily available to North American readers. What makes this anthology especially significant to Canadian
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| Book Review Black Moon Over Trinidad
by Jack Illingworth
Many readers turn away from a book when they learn from the press that the author is "political". Even if they are comfortable with having their own beliefs challenged, they are wary of encountering didacticism when all they are really interested in is
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| Book Review The Apprenticeship of Cary Fagan
by Michael Greenstein
Traditionally, Canadian-Jewish literature has been a tale of two ghettos: Montreal's St. Urbain area and Winnipeg's north end. More recently, Toronto has emerged as a blurred focal centre in the fiction of Matt Cohen, Anne Michaels, and Cary Fagan.
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| Book Review First Past the Post
by Amir Abedi
As the last two federal elections pointed out only too clearly, Canada's "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) electoral system has often exacerbated the extremely regionalized political party representation in the House of Commons. Then, in 1997, when the Liberal
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| Book Review Family Feuds
by Nathan Greenfield
Kevin Phillips chose his title well: by invoking the idea of a family romance, he both telegraphs that there is an Anglo-American world (to which we Canadians belong, though not quite in the way he imagines), and he opens up enough space for forgotten
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| Book Review Sperm Wars - Sex, Celibacy and Suburbanites
by Lorraine Johnson
Courtesy of Steve Mason, a strategy to achieve world peace: turn the United Nations into a swingers club. After all, asks Steve, "How do you drop a bomb onto people that you've just had an orgasm with?" Maybe his numbers pose certain tactical
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| Book Review Designs on Nature
by Liz Primeau
`Tis the growing season-and the current crop of gardening books should inspire green-thumbers of all persuasions a-plenty. For all his celebrity as an international garden designer and writer, John Brookes is a down-to-earth, practical man.
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| Interviews Odds Are On The Anxious Girls - Sherie Posesorski speaks with Zsuzsi Gartner
by Sherie Posesorski
Zsuzsi Gartner's first short story collection, All The Anxious Girls On Earth (Key Porter Books), has hit a critical nerve in reviewers. The clever, contemporary, playful, inventive,
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| Interviews Accidental Tourist in the Dark Realm - Diana Brebner speaks with Stephanie Bolster
by Diana Brebner
I spoke with Stephanie Bolster in late March, in the restaurant of the National Gallery of Canada. We've known each other for a few years, and have often met for lunch at the same table with a view of the Parliament Buildings high
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| Interviews Excavating TO's Alexandria - Branko Gorjup speaks with Greg Gatenby
by Branko Gorjup
In addition to being a formidable literary impresario-known to most people at home and abroad as the Artistic Director of the famed weekly Harbourfront Reading Series and the annual International Festival of Authors in Toronto-Greg Gatenby
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| Letters to Editor To the Editor
BANKING ON QUALITY POLEMICS. We were surprised, on reading François Lachance's review of our book, The Child and the Machine (Feb. 1999), to discover that it had been written by "Alice Armstrong" and "Charles Clement"
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 | Technology, Place, & Architecture The Jerusalem Seminar
by Kenneth Frampton, Arthur Spector, Lynne Rosman, Stanford Anderson, Julian Beinart, Robert Oxman, Joseph Rykwert, Kaarin Taipale, Kenneth Frampton,
288 pages $53.5 TC
ISBN: 0847820858
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Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Architecture
by Francois Lachance
The record reads Raimund Abraham stating that "Architecture doesn't necessarily have to be built; it can also be written." This, not in a lecture, but in an interview. It is these informative chats that capture the essence of a seminar as one compares
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Alana Wilcox
"Not a sudden glorious downpour but one that gathers slowly, the sky taking on colour like wounded skin, the thunder muffled at first, then ominous, moving closer, until lightning strafes the clouds..." Like the storm she describes, Merilyn
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Kevin O'Keeffe
Paul Quarrington's Spirit Cabinet (Random House Canada, 304 pages, $32.95) is a zany comic-mystery that centres on a pair of German-born misfits, Jurgen and Rudolfo, who, through a series of fateful occurrences and misadventures, become celebrated
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Jennifer Williams
As in her well-received first novel, The Cage, Audrey Schulman's Swimming with Jonah (Avon Books, 261 pages, $32 cloth) places the central character in an exotic locale where she is tested physically and mentally.
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Ted Whittaker
David Gilmour's fourth novel, Lost Between Houses (Random House, 229 pages, $29.95 cloth), departs slightly from the downtown Toronto fictioneer's chosen theme-immature Hogtown bourgeois WASPs behaving badly, out loud; or, as Gilmour himself
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 | The Follow
by Linda Spalding,
240 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 1550139290
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Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Anthropology
by Eva Tihanyi
Linda Spalding, best known as a novelist (The Paper Wife and Daughters of Captain Cook) and editor of the literary journal, Brick, has written a new book that is at once deeply personal and universally relevant.
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Jack Illingworth
There could be no better summary of Esta Spalding's third book of poetry than its title, Lost August (House of Anansi Press, 96 pages, $19.95 paper): the collection is a short encyclopaedia of loss. By mixing loss with its necessary
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 | Mean
86 pages $19.95
ISBN: 0887846343
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Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Poetry
by rob mclennan
In his long-anticipated first collection of poems, Mean (House of Anansi Press, 86 pages, $19.95 paper), Toronto's Ken Babstock has everything: love, hate, hope. He plies the importance of friends and family loyalty.
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Poetry
by rob mclennan
Two eyes are you sleeping (78 pages, $12.95 paper), Montreal writer Heather O'Neill's first full-length poetry collection published through DC Books' New Writers series, is probably as close to perfect as a collection
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Poetry
by rob mclennan
Originally self-published as a handmade and made-to-order book in 1996, Jan Zwicky's brilliant Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (88 pages, $12.95 paper) was subsequently reprinted by Brick Books late last fall after the word-of-mouth demand
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 | Wintersleep
by Marie-Claire Blais, Nigel Spencer,
120 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0921870604
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Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Drama
by Kathy Mezei
Marie-Claire Blais' Wintersleep (Ronsdale Press,143 pages, $14.95 paper) is a handsome book that presents the five short plays originally published in 1984 in French as Sommeil d'hiver by the feminist press,
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Theatre
by Keith Garebian
In 1986, Frank Rich was dubbed the "Butcher of Broadway" by English comedian Rowan Atkinson. He was also assailed by David Merrick, Arthur Kopit, and Trevor Nun. Rich's criticism of David Hare and the latter's subsequent retort provoked
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Culture
by D Sloboda
"The critic can only help the reader to clarify his or her own reactions, to understand the event of reading as, at one and the same time, an alteration of world view and a transformation of self-understanding. Added to this confrontation between
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 | Single & Single
by John Le Carre,
Simon & Schuster Trade
352 pages $26 TC
ISBN: 0684859262
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Brief Reviews Brief Reviews - Mystery
by Wayne Daniels
John le Carré's Single & Single (Viking, 337 pages, $36.99 cloth) begins with the murder, in very cold blood, of an English lawyer named Alfie Winser. We learn a great deal about this man very quickly-in all the time he has left,
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
If I Were The Moon is a gentle lullaby that is sure to engage and delight young readers. It's a wonderful treat for fans of Sheree Fitch, whose books include rambunctious and humorous favourites like There Were Monkeys In My Kitchen, Mabel Murple
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Erin Banting
Who better to demonstrate the importance of fire-safety to kids than a fire-breathing dragon? This is Jean Pendziwol's candidate of choice in her first picture book, No Dragons for Tea, as she takes kids through the safety fundamentals.
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 | Ribbon Rescue
by Robert N. Munsch, Eugenie,
Scholastic, Incorporated
pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0590890123
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Children's Books Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
When you finish reading his latest book, Ribbon Rescue, you know that Robert Munsch is a great storyteller. Ribbon Rescue feels like a story being told to a great big group of high-spirited youngsters who can hardly keep still,
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| Sassy Gracie
by James Sage, Pierre Pratt,
pages $17.99 TC
ISBN: 0333684273
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Children's Books Children`s Books
by Erinn Banting
There's nothing like a pair of big, clunky, red shoes to make one feel a little feisty. Maybe a little too feisty, in the case of Gracie, the little girl who sports a pair in James Sage's Sassy Gracie.Gracie's shoes are a little too
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 | Flags
by Maxine Trottier, Paul Morin,
pages $18.95 TC
ISBN: 0773731369
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Children's Books Children`s Books
by Sherie Posesorski
In Japanese Zen gardens, nature is artfully represented through the harmonious placement of differently sized stones, meticulously raked gravel and moss, and shielding evergreens and hedges. Its beauty is quiet, refined, and suggestive.
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Sherie Posesorski
It's the turn of the century in Cape Breton, and young James is getting ready for his first day of working in a coal mine. His Da, himself a miner for twenty years, voices his confidence and pride in his son: "You have coal in your blood, same as me.
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
It seems that the brilliant Canadian inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, is a hot (and fitting) subject these days for writers of children's fiction and educational books. Elizabeth MacLeod's Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Marnie Parsons
The title of Tim Wynne-Jones's book isn't simply a nod to its first story, nor to William Golding's dark novel about the lie of childhood innocence and the human capacity for brutality. It's a clue to the spirited dynamic of this fine
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Sherie Posesorski
Escaping into entertainment proves to be both life-sustaining and life-denying in Glen Huser's first young adult novel, Touch of the Clown. The story turns on the hard social realities of child abuse, neglect, poverty, alcoholism, and AIDS
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| Hidden World
by Alison Baird,
224 pages $0 TP
ISBN: 0140277552
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Children's Books Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
Maeve O'Connor yearns for escape. It's bad enough she's a "Plain Jane", she can't even get a role in the school play because she's not one of the popular crowd. To make matters worse, her parents are embroiled in a squabble that is set to explode and
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Julie Burtinshaw
Anita Horrocks has done it again. In her second novel for young adults, she has written a compelling, good-to-the-last-page story for teens and about teens. Narrator Kelly Farrell is a seventeen-year-old honours student who begins by telling us: "Most
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| Children's Books Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
If you want to know just how important great children's books are in developing a lifelong passion for reading, flip through the pages of How The Heather Looks. You should find yourself whisked back in time as you re-encounter the books that were
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| Douglas Fetherling Douglas Fetherling - Silver Dollar Bard
by Douglas Fetherling
Richard Lemm's Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger (Carleton University Press, 279 pages $34.95 cloth) is surely one of the most thoughtful, probing, and professional Canadian literary biographies of recent times-and we supposedly are living
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| Great Authors High Shelves - Lessons in Evil and in Love
"For God's sake, open the universe a little more!" (Saul Bellow, The Dean's December) In the breaking hours of Victoria Day, I awoke to the distressed yelping of refugees from the rain.
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| Great Authors Great Authors of Our Time - Josef Skvorecky
Josef Skvorecky was born in 1924 in the Czech town of Náchod. During the Second World War, he spent two years as a slave labourer in a German aircraft factory.
After the war, Skvorecky studied at Charles University in Prague
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| Great Authors A Never Written Letter to Judy Garland - Marek Kusiba speaks with Josef Skvorecky
This interview took place on May 6, 1999 at the home of Josef Skvorecky in Toronto. MK: You live on a dead-end street near the intersection of three "No Exit" signs. Do you consider exile a dead-end street?
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