Literary

Phonogram: Rue BrittaniaKieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie(Image Comics)Phonogram is a comic borne from the authors’ nostalgia for the Britpop phenomenon of the ’90s, and an interest in magic and fantasy. This could be trite, but it’s not. Aging British scenesters have magic powers gained from tapping in to the energy of music; 10 years on, […]

Abstract Painting in CanadaRoald NasgaardDouglas & McIntyreSplendid. A big book—432 pages with 200 illustrations in colour. It’s much easier to reel off the names of American abstract painters: Newman, Still, Pollock, Rothko, Kline, Gottlieb…on and on. Canadians? Not so much. Borduas, Martin, Molinari, Shadbolt… uh, who else? This book puts the Canadians on the wall. […]

SkimMariko and Jillian Tamaki(Anansi)Skim, a collaboration between cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, is not the first coming-of-age graphic novel, but it’s one of the best, ranking up there with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis as a spot-on telling of teenage angst and a reminder of why you wouldn’t go back for a million bucks. Told in three […]

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 […]

Get It Ripejae steele(Arsenal Pulp Press)The best parts of jae steele’s entertaining vegan cookbook, Get It Ripe, are what’s missing from its pages: No judgmental preaching and lists of expensive ingredients that you’ll never find in Halifax anyway. steele, a registered holistic nutritionist, spends a good chunk of the book breaking down food choices, nutrition, […]

On PerformingBob SniderGaspereau PressThis companion volume to the folk singer’s 2005 book On Songwriting comes across as a looser collection of thoughts on a career in music than that first book. Bob Snider built an argument for clarity and simplicity in songwriting in his first offering; here he recognizes the same fixed structure is harder […]

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 […]

[image-4]Published January 03, 2008.Devlin KuyekGood Crop / Bad CropBetween the LinesThis slim book (124 pages) is a manifesto, a call for Canadians to rise up against the cabal of multinational corporations that have hijacked national agricultural policies. For thousands of years, seed development was in the hands of farmers, who saved seed from each harvest […]

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 […]

I Still Have a Suitcase in BerlinStephens Gerrard MaloneRandomHouseLocal author Stephens Gerrard Malone’s first novel, Miss Elva, was nominated for a Dartmouth Book Award, but latest, I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin, would be better suited on the Governor General’s list. Beginning on the shores of Point Pleasant Park in 1932, young Haligonian Michael […]

Long Story ShortElyse FriedmanAnansiElyse Friedman brings on-the-job skills to her fiction. As a former radio writer and producer for YTV and CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera, among other things, she’s developed an amazing ear for dialogue and visual descriptions (like radio-vet Heather O’Neill, I’m sure Friedman’s stories make great readings). Long Story Short’s title fits—it’s […]

Looking For AnneIrene Gammel(Key Porter)Irene Gammel’s Looking for Anne isn’t so much a biography of Montgomery’s life but an outline of her process during the time she wrote Anne of Green Gables. Gammel portrays Montgomery as a serious and ambitious writer but asserts it was profound loneliness and emotional isolation that drove Montgomery in her […]