 | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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| | 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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