Filling out the storyline of Maurice Sendak’s childhood book Where the Wild Things Are is an uphill battle from page one. The original book is less than 20 sentences and owes its success to vivid illustrations that leave the plot almost entirely to imagination. Dave Eggers’ The Wild Things, written on Sendak’s suggestion, is a […]
Literary
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The Banana Story of Agony, Lesley Johnson (Conundrum)
Not quite a children’s book and not quite a graphic novel, Sackville, NB, artist Lesley Johnson creates strange vignettes illustrated in loose, fluid watercolours. Her themes range from a persistent Santa who a suspicious boy won’t let into the house, to a girl who ignores her family’s warnings that there’s a chicken on her butt, […]
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It Feels So Good When I Stop, Joe Pernice (Riverhead)
If some movie adaptations are better left as books, it’s best to stick with Pernice’s novel soundtrack (available on CD) for It Feels So Good When I Stop, rather than the novel itself. A nameless protagonist in his mid-20s withdraws to a small corner of Cape Cod to escape his failures in life (mainly a […]
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Marc Bell’s Hot Potatoe: Fine Ahtwerks: 2001-2008, Marc Bell (Drawn & Quarterly)
If you’ve wondered what the former Coast comic artist has been up to the last couple of years, this 276-page, glossy, hardcover book will satisfy your nostalgic longings (it also doubles as a weight. Heavy!). Spend hours trying to peel back the layers of Bell’s drawings, comics, typography and mixed-media cardboard pieces, but you’ll always […]
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The Prescription Errors, Charles Demers (Insomniac)
A dark novel centred around an obsessive-compulsive young Vancouver man, Daniel struggles to maintain his own fragile sanity while those around him fall apart. Also an activist, Demers skillfully weaves in lesbian parenting and free-speech arguments, aging activists and neighbourhood politics, seeming sincere and not forced—the way politics entwine our real lives. Demers’ Vancouver settings […]
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Selected Blackouts, John Goldbach (Insomniac)
Full of honest but not overly sentimental emotion, Selected Blackouts is a strong debut collection of short stories based mainly on adolescence and young adulthood. A blackout theme ties the book together subtly but neatly. “How Much Do They Know?” is a painfully detailed interior monologue about romance and secrets within a group of friends, […]
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Rebecca Born in the Maelstrom, Marie-Claire Blais (Anansi)
Rebecca was born in the Maelstrom, but you’re perhaps not so prepared for the swirling, crushing vortex of Marie-Claire Blais’ latest offering. Her GG Award-winner, composed in one paragraph and with pages-long sentences, is as clear as the Income Tax Act. It’s the fourth novel in a series, which could be to blame for my […]
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Ryan Turner tests What We’re Made Of
If you ever meet Ryan Turner, watch out for his little tan notebook. The Moleskin pad has a spine barely half the width of your pinky, but it holds the secrets to many of Turner’s characters—and one of them might be a piece of you. “Once in a while, someone will say something that I […]
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Inventory, The AV Club (Simon & Schuster)
Any book that begins with a list of “Keanu Reeves movies that Keanu Reeves didn’t ruin” has me at River’s Edge. The AV Club gathered the best of their cleverly skewed pop culture lists into an hilarious compendium of tragic movie masturbation scenes, disgusting movie meals, songs nearly ruined by saxophones and Simpsons references, adding […]
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Track & Trace, Zachariah Wells (Biblioasis)
Zachariah Wells (reading this Thursday with Wayne Clifford and Amy Jones, 6pm at The Company House) frequently tunes to the world in winter, searching out its subtleties with heightened sense, a pursuit implied by title, design and illustrations by Seth. The PEI native’s rural settings are recognizably Maritime, and the power of the landscape to […]
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Ecoholic Home, Adria Vasil (Vintage Canada)
Popular NOW columnist Adria Vasil follows up her book of environmentally sound Canadian products and services with more practical tips, this time focusing on the home. Leaving the Birkenstock crew in the dust, Vasil understands that her readers don’t want to be scolded, and most don’t have thick wallets or time to make homemade laundry […]
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The Warlord, written and illustrated by Mike Grell (DC)
Grell’s sorcery, sword-and-Automatic-Magnum opus has been revived twice since he left the book in 1982, and the most recent series (2006) that he didn’t write has been quickly forgotten. So it’s especially good to have Grell once again steering the tale of Travis Morgan, an American military man turned freedom fighter in an other-dimensional, timeless […]