| Book Review A Cruel Disease Unleased on Mankind
by Matt Sturrock
For the more hysterical or morbid members of our readership, agitated
at the thought of all those engineered bio-weapons out there waiting
to do us in, it might be useful to remember that the threat of
incurable superbugs is nothing new. Indeed, as early as the 15th
century, the world was embroiled in a primitive, and mostly
incidental, form of germ warfare that eradicated millions on either
side of the Atlantic.
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| Book Review In the Land of Pain
by Matt Sturrock
European syphilis first began to appear among the strumpets and scamps
of Barcelona's waterfront shanties before migrating through Spain to
Italy, France, Germany, India, China, Japan, and Russia. It typically
flourished during times of war, aided in its proliferation by the
travels of transnational mercenaries and the imbedded battalions of
prostitutes who serviced them.
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 | Kill-site
by Tim Lilburn
McClelland and Stewart
75 pages $16.99 paper
ISBN: 0771053215
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Book Review Post-Driven Developments
by Jerry White
One of the best pieces of general-interest film criticism that I
recall reading in the last few years appeared in the Times Literary
Supplement on 7 February 2003. Murray Smith's "Darwin and the
Directors" was a carefully considered, accessibly written examination
of the relationship between cinematic aesthetics and Darwinian theory, ...
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| Book Review The Universe According to Primo Levi
by Brian Fawcett
In April 1980, Italian editor Guilio Borlatti asked several prominent
Italian writers, Primo Levi among them, whether they would be
interested in compiling an anthology of what would be, for them,
essential reading. Borlatti seems to have left what "essential
reading" meant to the writers he asked: cultural building blocks,
seminal texts, personal favourites.
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 | Beyond Fate
by Margaret Visser
House of Anansi Press $17.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0887846793
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Book Review True Freedom According to Margaret Visser
by Sam Ajzenstat
Part-way through Beyond Fate, her contribution to the prestigious
Massey Lectures, Margaret Visser tells the famous story of a French
aristocratic who, when a beleaguered underling pleads "I have to live"
replies "I don't see why" (p103). The message classic liberals draw
from this story is that human nature so generally makes us put our own
needs and ideas of justice above those of others, that transcendent
visions of morality, though real, can't be counted on to bring about
societies of even moderate freedom and equality.
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| Book Review Berlin just before the Deluge
by George Fetherling
The defining moment in Thomas Levenson's Einstein in Berlin (Random
House of Canada, 486 pages, $39.95) comes when in December 1932,
Albert Einstein, one step ahead of the Nazis, is leaving for his
American exile after almost 20 years in Berlin. "Take a good look," he
says to his wife. "You will never see it again."
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| Book Review How Einstein took Berlin
by Stan Persky
Science writer and filmmaker Thomas Levenson launches his thoroughly
readable account of physicist Albert Einstein's 18-year sojourn in the
capital of Germany, Einstein in Berlin, with a modern parallel telling
of the familiar Bible story of the journey of the Magi. In the
original, three wise kings from the East follow the stars to the
humble manger, where they offer gifts and adoration to a new-born son.
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| Book Review Transporting oneself into Europe's Past
by Irena Murray
Few childhood experiences are as formative as riding the train. My
favourite memory is of a stocky stationmaster in my father's
birthplace in East Bohemia who heralded the annual arrival of the
train that delivered us for our summer vacations with the limerick:
From far and near/the train comes here/so be a dear/and have a beer.
While my mother thought that inciting a six-year old to alcoholism was
a capital offense, ...
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| Book Review Just in Time for Halloween
by Gordon Phinn
On August 10, 1901, two English schoolteachers, Annie Moberly and
Eleanor Jourdain, guidebooks in hand, somehow managed to get lost in
the gardens of Versailles. Wandering about in the ever more oppressive
summer heat, they began to notice more and more people in 18th century
garb, a couple of whom spoke to their imminent distress in a manner
obviously intended as helpful. Gardeners gardened, well dressed ladies
sat and sketched, a wedding party moved off in the distance.
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| Book Review The Orphic Soul: Kenneth Rexroth
by Rachelle K. Lerner
The life and work of American poet and critic Kenneth Rexroth are
marked by contradictions. Survey his literary profiles and you collide
with Rexroth the "literary street fighter-anarchist" or "daddy-o
Rexroth". Read his Japanese work and you're given a short,
introspective Japanese-American with the moniker "Kenny".
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| Book Review Not Lost in Space: Phyllis Gotlieb
by Susan Briscoe
The literary community is often uncomfortable with the crossing of
genres, and writers who are successful in one are rarely so
well-received by the critics of another. This has certainly been the
case for Phyllis Gotlieb who, favoured with lasting popularity as a
science fiction novelist, has received little attention for her
poetry.
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| Book Review Sam Spiegel
by Keith Garebian
His third wife summarized him by quoting Churchill's line about Soviet
Russia: "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Certainly
much about him was mysterious, for he deliberately let you know only
fragments of his life. He perpetuated his mother's deception that the
family were Austrian Jews with German culture. He became famous in
Hollywood as S.P. Eagle, producer of Tales of Manhattan and The
African Queen. He threw fabulous New Year's Eve parties, ...
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| Book Review When Eagles Call
by W.P. Kinsella
When Eagles Call is an earnest historical novel set in what is now the
Langley- White Rock area of British Columbia. Dobbie tells the story
of a young Hawaiian named Kimo who is recruited by the Hudson's Bay
Co., and becomes one of many Hawaiians to work at the Company forts
along the Fraser River in Canada. We learn, in meticulously researched
detail, of the hard lives of the Company employees as they encounter
the unfriendly elements and various Native peoples, some friendly,
some not so.
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 | Twenty-six
by Leo McKay Jr.
McClelland & Stewart $32.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0771054750
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Book Review Twenty-Six
by W.P. Kinsella
Twenty-Six opens with Ziv, a 23-year-old Nova Scotian, drunk and
wandering the freezing streets of a small mining town. Ziv's father is
an old drunk, while Ziv's older brother, Arvel, is back at the family
home after being kicked out by his wife for being a drunk. This is not
a happy home, nor is it full of likable characters. It is often
difficult to know exactly what this novel is about or whose story it
is.
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 | Damselfish
by Susan Ouriou
XYZ Publishing $22.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1894852052
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Book Review Damselfish
by W.P. Kinsella
Damselfish has Hope, a struggling artist from Montreal, living on
grant money in Mexico City, when her crabby older sister Faith, joins
her. Their father, who was Mexican, deserted the family years before.
Their mother now lives in another part of Mexico. Hope finds herself a
boyfriend, Jos, who is every woman's fantasy, handsome, understanding,
a great lover, apparently employed, and willing to put up with all
sorts of icky family problems, the kind that would send most men
screaming into the hills.
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| Book Review Filling the Belly
by W.P. Kinsella
Barely novella-length, Filling the Belly is a story poetically written
and often very moving. Rosa, a girl of about 12 or 13, one of a wild
pack of Newfoundland Irish, is very troubled.
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| Book Review The Island Walkers
by W.P. Kinsella
It has been some time since I've read a novel, especially a long one,
that I wished would not end. Here we have an old-fashioned novel with
plot, and a story filled with highly developed and sympathetic
characters. Alf Walker is a struggling working man who is unwillingly
pulled into a series of events concerning the establishment of a union
at the knitting mill in Southern Ontario where he works.
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| Book Review Hit and Run
by M.J. Fishbane
It's become imperative for today's Teen (or Tween) novels to have a
healthy dose of teenage angst. This is no different in the following
three mystery books for young adults, where what's been hidden from
these characters is who they are rather than "who done it."
Take Hit and Run, by four-time Arthur Ellis Award winner Norah
McClinton.
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 | Tom Finder
by Martine Leavitt
Fitzhenry & Whiteside $12.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0889952620
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Book Review Tom Finder
by M.J. Fishbane
Things are a little strang in Tom Finder, where Martine Leavitt weaves
Mozart's The Magic Flute-she quotes the opera at the beginning of each
chapter, transforming the passages into clues for solving the
mystery-into her story about a fifteen-year-old boy with a bizarre
case of amnesia.
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| Book Review The Ghost in the Machine
by M.J. Fishbane
In Mary Woodbury's The Ghost in the Machine, overweight and awkward
fifteen-year-old Tyler Graham finds a ghost in his dead uncle's
destroyed Volkswagen beetle one summer night. The ghost, who looks
like a teenage version of Tyler's Uncle Scott, tells him to fix the
car. Suddenly inspired, Tyler, who has no previous mechanical
experience, decides to do as the ghost asks. With the help of his new
friend, Haley Nixon, Tyler discovers why his mother is so depressed,
how his uncle Scott died, and he learns crucial facts about the feud
between his family and another.
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| Book Review The Magic Pot
by Olga Stein
Although the context for the story is the very modest home of
impoverished elderly Jewish grandparents, the appeal is universal.
Seven-year-old Rifkeh visits her tiny Bubbe Malke every Saturday,
never noticing how sickly or poor she is. Because Bubbe Malke is
loving and kind, considerate of every living thing around her, she is
to Rifkeh always larger than life and beautiful.
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| Book Review An Alien in My House
by Olga Stein
Ben's elderly grandfather has just moved in. Ben thinks of him as an
alien. His body comes apart-his teeth come out and his hair comes off.
He makes lots of noise when he breathes, and he needs a button in his
ear to hear what is being said to him. He eats only green food-peas,
broccoli, and spinach, and he takes many pills.
Read more...
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 | Dove Legend
by Richard Outram
PorcupineÆs Quill
173 pages $14.95 paper
ISBN: 0889842213
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Book Review A Light Blaze in Rare Air: Richard Outram
by Jeffrey Donaldson
Dove Legend is a pungent pot pourri for Outram readers. It binds
together the shorter poem cycles, festive holiday broadsheets,
occasional verses and love poems, and a number of highly disguised and
thus revealing autobiographical pieces, all written over the past ten
years (roughly since Outram's retirement from stage production at the
CBC).
Read more...
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| Book Review "Her Kindled Shadow..." An Introduction to the Work of Richard Outram
by Jeffrey Donaldson
No one should be surprised to learn that the first scholar to offer a
full book-length treatment of Outram's work is a poet himself, and a
very fine poet at that. In his own poems and in his other critical
commentary (on John Thompson for instance), Peter Sanger shares with
his subject Outram a love of words, an appetite for the linguistic or
semantic foxhunt, a jeweller's eye for the intricacies of literary
form, a midwife's gentle handling of the freshly delivered
literary-historical curio or bibliographic treasure.
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 | A Further Exile
by Tom Henihan
Ekstasis Editions $14.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1894800044
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Book Review A Further Exile
by Shane Neilson
Tom Henihan is an odd kind of Canadian poet. He has never applied for
a grant. He does not submit to magazines or contests. When he deigns
to give readings-which is rare-he refuses to identify himself beyond
his host's introduction. He also eschews the typical set-up most poets
inflict on their audiences. He detests the story-behind-the-poem and
the why-I-wrote-this explanations.
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| Book Review A Mortar of Metaphor: Tom Henihan
by Shane Neilson
Tom Henihan is an odd kind of Canadian poet. He has never applied for
a grant. He does not submit to magazines or contests. When he deigns
to give readings-which is rare-he refuses to identify himself beyond
his host's introduction. He also eschews the typical set-up most poets
inflict on their audiences. He detests the story-behind-the-poem and
the why-I-wrote-this explanations.
Read more...
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| Book Review Rethinking the Ancient Greeks
by Andy Lamey
Is there any other civilization quite so dull-quite so tiresome and
overrated-as the Greeks? Consider the tragedies for which they are
famous: all those paranoid speeches about vengeful gods, who are
invariably out to get us. Does any other dramatic conceit ring nearly
as false? (And just who are these gods, anyway? Apollo can run fast.
Poseidon lives under the sea. Didn't we meet them as Flash and
Aquaman, back in the Justice League?)
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| Book Review A Sharp Tooth in the Fur
by Ibolya Kaslik
Darryl Whetter's "A Sharp Tooth in the Fur" presents a puzzling and
intriguing glimpse into the male psyche. Whetter's stories explore
responsibility, violence, ownership, marital separation, drugs,
academia, adolescence, and sex.
Self-deprecatory and ironic to a fault, Whetter's characters are
either middle-aged males, who happen to be teachers or academics, or
adolescent boys pushing themselves to physical extremes.
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 | The Bat Tattoo
by Russell Hoban
Bloomsbury UK $6.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0747560226
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Book Review Russell Hoban
by Eric Miller
Much of Russell Hoban's latest novel, The Bat Tattoo, consists of what
scholars call ekphrasis-the description in words of works of art. The
reader is treated to thoughtful interpretations of Caspar David
Friedrich's Chalk Cliffs on Rugen, of Daumier's Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza, of Paul Bril's Campo Vaccino with a Gypsy Woman Reading a Palm,
and of an eighteenth-century Chinese bowl decorated with red bats,
symbols of happiness. Elsewhere ...
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| Book Review The Dance of Geometry
by Jeff Bursey
Recently there have been several fictional works dealing with Dutch
painting-Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Susan Vreeland's
Girl in Hyacinth Blue and Katharine Weber's The Music Lesson-and so it
is legitimate to ask whether or not Brian Howell, in a novel dealing
with Vermeer, contributes something new. The title indicates The Dance
of Geometry regards the abstract problems of perspective as more
important than fleshing out the figure of Vermeer; this is a novel
about ideas, not about characters.
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 | Nowhere Man
by Aleksandar Hemon
Nan A. Talese $35.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0385499248
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Book Review Nowhere Man
by Nathan Whitlock
Aleksander Hemon's next work of fiction should be called "The Nabokov
Comparison". Just as questions of identity-sexual, linguistic,
historical, literary-haunt Hemon's fictional hero Josef Pronek, so
have comparisons with Nabokov haunted the critical reception given his
first novel, Nowhere Man. It's a tricky and often irresistible
operation, placing an artist this way.
Read more...
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 | Hemingway in Africa
by Christopher Ondaatje
Harper Collins Canada $39.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0002006707
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Book Review Hemingway in Africa
by Andrew Robinson
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is one of the world's classic short
stories, and one of the most famous fictions written by Ernest
Hemingway. It appeared in 1936, two years after Hemingway returned
from his first African safari, when he was at the height of his
literary and worldly success.
Read more...
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 | Deafening
by Frances Itani
Harper Collins Canada $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0002005395
|
Book Review Deafening
by W.P. Kinsella
Deafening, by Frances Itani, is set in the years before and during
World War I. This very well researched, sometimes touching, though
occasionally boring effort has a beautiful cover photo by Susan
Daboll. The story centers around Grania, a small town southern Ontario
girl who is deafened by scarlet fever at age five.
Read more...
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| Book Review Gardeners in Paradise
by W.P. Kinsella
Gardeners in Paradise sports a beautiful cover photograph by C. L.
Hunter of a terraced garden overlooking the sea. There are also very
fine black and white photos at the beginning of each story. But don't
mistake this for a gardening book. It's a collection of 12 stories
exuding powerful emotions, with an occasional foray into the surreal.
Read more...
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| Book Review Collecting Extraordinary Ordinary Lives
by Irene D'Souza
Readers who expect Alan Bennett to turn in another opus as
accomplished as his previous works, such as The Talking Head' series
on PBS, will not be disappointed in the three stories that make up the
collection of The Laying on of Hands. Bennett, who has already
captured our loyalty and made us more attentive to the foibles of
being human in screen plays such as Prick up your ears, is never
preachy or sappy.
Read more...
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| Book Review The Mystical Ecosystem of A.L. Stollman
by Michael Greenstein
Aryeh Lev Stollman is one of those rare creatures who straddles C.P.
Snow's "two cultures" of science and art. A neuroradiologist by day,
Stollman has published two novels and a short story collection, whose
title hints at the two cultures-the dialogue between artistic time and
scientific entropy. As one of the characters exclaims: "Science and
the humanities are one!
Read more...
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| The Demon Lover
by David Arnason
Turnstone Press $16.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0888012780
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Book Review Lapping up Amason's Bowl Full of Tall Tales
by Steven M. Berzensky
David Arnason knows how to tell a gripping tale whose twists and turns
defy all predictability. His latest short story collection was a
finalist (April 26, 2003) for the 2002 Manitoba Writing and Publishing
Awards, including nominations for Book of the Year and Fiction. Many
gems of different colours fill Arnason's enchanting bowl of seventeen
stories.
Read more...
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| The Demon Lover
by David Arnason
Turnstone Press $16.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0888012780
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Book Review Whimsical Stories Not Without Poignancy
by Padma Viswanathan
The title story of Rabindranath Maharaj's new collection of short
fiction centres on a thick manuscript of homilies-as-hypotheticals.
Each takes the form of an if' statement followed by a corollary but'
question. In this artful tale, a struggling writer of speculative
fiction finds his apartment invaded by Pegu, a bombastic, mustachioed
older gentleman.
Read more...
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 | Brick Lane
by Monica Ali
Simon & Schuster Canada $37.5 Hardcover
ISBN: 0743243307
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Book Review A Simple Country Girl Bound in London
by Nancy Wigston
Monica Ali has made all the "A" lists of Best Young British Writers
this year, kudos following the publication of her first novel, Brick
Lane, a hearty broth of a tale that follows the gradual assimilation
of a young village bride from Bangladesh into the harsh realities of
life in modern London. Readers might be reminded of the rapturous
reception that followed Zadie Smith's White Teeth a few years back, ...
Read more...
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| Book Review Fantasy Setting for Nietschean Superman
by Patrick R. Burger
R.Scott Bakker's The Darkness that Comes Before: Book One of The
Prince of Nothing is a deep meditation on philosophy, religion and the
state of our world. At the same time it is a top notch exemplar of the
fantasy romance sub-genre.
Read more...
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 | Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
McClelland & Stewart $37.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0771008686
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Book Review Back to the Future-Atwood's New Dystopia
by Cindy MacKenzie
Following hard on the heels of her Booker prize winner, The Blind
Assassin (2000), Margaret Atwood's latest and most disturbing novel,
Oryx and Crake, has shaken readers and critics with its highly
dystopic view of the future. According to the author's essay found on
the website oryxandcrake.com, the novel is not science fiction, but
speculative fiction.
Read more...
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 | The Slynx
by Tolstaya
Houghton Mifflin Co. $37.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0618124977
|
Book Review After the "Blast", Future Life is Backward
by Olga Stein
Tatyana Tolstaya's The Slynx is in some ways similar to Margaret
Atwood's Onyx and Crake. Tolstaya's takes us two hundred years into a
post-apocalyptic future, constructs a dystopia of communal life in a
village standing on the ashes of what used to be part of Moscow, and
reveals how the meanings of words atrophy given certain cultural
conditions-when what prevails is widespread ignorance and complete
intellectual impoverishment.
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| Alien Heart
by Lyall Powers
University Of Toronto Press $44.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0887551750
|
Book Review Margaret Laurence Danced on this Earth
by Clara Thomas
Lyall Powers is uniquely qualified to write this biography of Margaret
Laurence. From the time in the 40s when they were fellow
undergraduates at United College in Winnipeg, both primarily
interested in English courses and sometimes finding themselves in the
same classes, they were friends.
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| Book Review The Labyrinths of Mind and Jungle
by Erling Friis-Baastad
When quantum physics began disassembling the Newtonian universe, all
manner of metaphysical speculations gained, or regained, credence.
What most of us took for reality became suspect and all those tedious
New Agers chanted, "I told you so." The good news is, Keats's handy
cop-out, negative capability, still serves even when the mind
threatens to buckle under the weight of Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle or Bell's theorem: Take what you need and leave the rest.
Read more...
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| Book Review Man-Made Disasters: Origins of Ethno-Racial Conflict in Africa
by Christopher Ondaatje
As recently as the 1970s, the Great Lakes region of east
Africa-encompassing Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, eastern Congo and western
Tanzania-conjured dreams "of an earthly paradise similar to an
extended Solomonic Ethiopia," in the words of Jean-Pierre Chrtien. But
then Uganda in the mid 1980s, and Burundi, Rwanda and Zaire (now the
Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1990s, became veritable hells on
earth.
Read more...
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| Book Review A Natural Disaster Remembered World-Over
by Clara Thomas
Simon Winchester has a genius for titles. His The Map that Changed the
World and The Madman and the Prophet became best-sellers and Krakatoa:
The Day the World Exploded is well on its way to a similar success.
Our all-too-human enjoyment of disasters, especially those far away in
time and geography, guarantees the morbid curiosity that will move
this book off the shelves and Winchester's skilled managing of his
narrative guarantees our continuing attention.
Read more...
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