Literary

We Could Be Like That Couple Sarah Steinberg(Insomniac Press)In her first book, Sarah Steinberg does certain things really well. For one, there’s her brevity and sparse style: language is smart and pared back and sentences are mostly simple constructions that read smoothly. This is also helped by the book’s design, by former Haligonian designer Gillian […]

Almost Green James Glave(Douglas & McIntyre)In the 1986 comedy The Money Pit, home renovator Tom Hanks laments, “Here lies Walter Fielding. He bought a house, and it killed him.” Flash-forward two decades, replace house with Eco-Shed, and there’s James Glave nearly breaking his arm using a wild hole-saw while his radio blasts classic rock. In […]

Before Green GablesBudge Wilson(Viking)Anne Shirley is the unquestioned champion of her own life in Budge Wilson’s Before Green Gables, the Montgomery-estate approved prequel to Anne of Green Gables. Wilson tells a tragic story of abandonment, misuse and abuse in Anne’s early childhood but never once allows her to give in to her circumstances as she […]

A Covenant of SaltMartine Desjardins (translated by Fred Reed and David Hormel)Talon BooksBefore nutritionists blackballed salt for causing high blood pressure, it was the most valuable and holy of dietary staples. Pure, incorruptible and potentially deadly, salt is the central theme in Montreal author Martine Desjardins’ macabre historic thriller, A Covenant of Salt. The novel […]

The Angel RiotsIbi Kaslik(Penguin)Anyone who has an allergy to hipster fiction would be forgiven for tossing Ibi Kaslik’s book down after a reference to Pitchfork—music-wankery website supreme—appears on page 13. It doesn’t help when you read in the press notes that Broken Social Scene named a song, “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)” after […]

BlackoutsCraig BoykoMcClelland and StewartAt 28, Craig Boyko’s stories have been nominated for the Journey Prize several times and published, it seems, in every Canadian literary magazine. Blackouts, his first book, is a collection of short fiction. It travels from Stalinist Russia to WWII-era London to banal, contemporary Canadian suburbs. Boyko is a skilled, articulate writer, […]

The Goddess of WarLauren Weinstein(Picturebox inc.)The goddess of war gets sick of her job, takes a personal day and broods about the past while getting drunk on the blood of sacrificed virgins in this graphic novel. American comics artist Weinstein deserves more recognition than she’s received with her two previous books, and perhaps with her […]

The Late Hector KiplingDavid ThewlisPenguinHey! Poking about for a kicking novel with hyper-charged entertainment values? Current as tomorrow? Torrent-paced? With a carnage of truly whacked-out characters, which include a crazed dandy stalker and an American punk-poet love goddess who spells orgasm “S&M?” Similar in tenor to Ricky Gervais’s, iconoclastic British actor/writer David Thewlis serves up […]

The RavinePaul Quarrington(Random House)If there’s anything harder than writing a good novel, it’s writing a bad novel well. But it’s this feat that Canada Reads 2008 winner Paul Quarrington accomplishes in his latest comedic romp. A book within a book, The Ravine is egomaniac Phil McQuigge’s attempt to write a memoir. An “enthusiastic amateur alcoholic” […]

Free LabChristine Macy (Tuns Press)At the risk of oversimplifying, writers of books on architecture (like architects themselves) select from two options: Going big and elaborate, or keeping it short and simple. A practitioner and professor at Dalhousie, Christine Macy thankfully elects the latter. In Free Lab, covering 15 years of work (1991-2006), she succinctly and […]

Yet at a Distance—Father Poems from the MaritimesVariousBorealisThis anthology, launching on January 25 at Local Jo Cafe, opens with the parable of the prodigal son. Gary Burrill, the collection’s editor writes an opaque foreword about why “father poems” proliferate in the Maritimes. Attaching a regional basis is debatable. The biblical passage suggests all sons are […]

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 […]