Sue Carter Flinn

The LearnersChip Kidd(Simon & Schuster)Chip Kidd is one of North America’s most famous graphic designers, named in Time’s top-100 most influential people. Best known for his DC Comics publications (he’s obsessed with Batman), Kidd is an author, too: His hilarious first novel, The Cheese Monkeys, is set in a 1950s American college where naive narrator […]

Krazy!Curated by Bruce Grenville(Douglas & McIntyre)Pop culture fans don’t need to travel past the Rockies to enjoy KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime+Comics+Video Games+Art, an exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery running until September 7. Although the institution, which invited six curators to select works (including Seth, Art Spiegelman and Tim Johnson—who directed the famous 3D […]

Jerome: The Historical Spectacle Ami McKay (Gaspereau Press)Jerome, in production at Two Planks and a Passion Theatre until Sunday, is a juggernaut of Nova Scotian talent: The play’s written by Ami McKay (The Birth House), and stars Zuppa Circus’s Ben Stone and Susan Leblanc-Crawford. Now Jerome is published by Gaspereau Press, the creator of books […]

SlashSlash with Anthony BozzaHarper Collins’Tis the season when publishers load our holiday-gift plates with rock ’n’ roll autobiographies like Marianne Faithfull’s (this one’s too cold) and Ron Wood’s (too old). As far as salacious, dirty stories go, Slash is just right. I don’t want to read how the Crüe lads degraded legions of female groupies; […]

In a MistDevon Code(Invisible Publishing)I could have sworn Devon Code was American, not from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The now Toronto-based writer’s debut collection of short stories would fit nicely beside John Updike or Raymond Carver. In fact, Code’s paired-down stories are reminiscent of 1970s American “dirty realism.” While reading these meticulously constructed and intelligent stories, […]

FallingAnne Simpson(M&S)The first sentence of Griffin Poetry Prize-winner Anne Simpson’s novel begins with a fall. Teenager Lisa tumbles off a four-wheeler, her body pinned underneath in a small stream while her brother, Damien, drunk on swimming and sun, dozes nearby. A year later, Damien and his mother Ingrid travel to Niagara Falls, a place that […]

Big White KnucklesBrian Tucker(Vagrant Press)It’s a testament to Brian Tucker’s writing that I had to put White Knuckles down several times. Not because it’s a terrible book—not at all, but because Tucker’s bloody, squishy, crunchy fight scenes are wincingly vivid. Lucky for me, Tucker isn’t afraid to deploy his sharp sense of humour too, which […]

I TaniaBrian Joseph DavisECWI always thought that it would be a great idea for an author to provide a soundtrack to accompany a novel and then I found one, on brianjosephdavis.com. As much as I approve of Funkadelic and Chrome, his music choices left me as cold as his experimental “highly fictionalized true story,” I, […]

[image-2][image-3][image-4] (click for larger version)Published January 31, 2008.Around the World in 57 1/2 GigsDave Bidini(M&S)After 26 years of performing to a devoted fan base without mansions or mainstream fame, The Rheostatics called it quits, leaving rhythm guitarist, singer and writer Dave Bidini with a soul-deep dilemma: what does a middle-aged musician, whose identity is so […]

Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing MyselfRussell Wangersky(Thomas Allen)Certain professions are overly romanticized in popular television and film—does the world need another canoodling medical drama or corrupt cop flick? The best in those genres, like The Wire, are written by those who have actually done the job. Russell Wangersky’s book about his years […]

Glass VoicesCarol BruneauCormorantIn Halifax writer Carol Bruneau’s last book, Berth, her main character Willa sacrifices a comfortable life as a military wife and mother to follow a mysterious man who lives in an isolated lighthouse on the island of Thrumcap (based on McNabs). In Glass Voices, 71-year-old Lucy Caines copes with a stroke-ridden husband, a […]