Reviews. News. Interviews.
In April 2017, Justin Barbour and his Cape Shore water dog, Saku, arrived in Robinsons, on the Rock’s west coast, where they began a quest to experience the province’s woods and waters first-hand. A late winter lingers as they push over the Long Range Mountains to the interior of the island, where they hope thawed lakes and rivers will allow them to continue by inflatable raft.…
My introduction to sci-fi was The Muppet Show, Pigs in Space launching me into the genre. What followed were Star Wars and Buck Rogers – anything, really, with a John Williams or Queen soundtrack. I realize that doesn’t much whittle it down. Later in life, I became a Trekker, and still refuse to choose between Kirk and Picard.
More to the point, here’s what I like about Pedestal, Gareth Mitton’s first novel – futuristic, dystopian science fiction.…
met Cynthia Sharp at a Vancouver poetry reading. It may’ve been a gallery or a resto-pub. That part I no longer remember. What I do remember, however, is the depth of her reading, commitment to her craft. This is a writer through-and-through, a committed teacher of poetry as well as an accomplished novelist. Following another event, a fresh air showcase under a canopy of leafy deciduous, we met in a group for a post-reading happy hour that turned into six, then a sailor-like walk toward takeaway curry.…
Skiing With Henry Knox represents a bit of a departure for Islandport Press of Maine. This book is not written by a Mainer nor does it take place in Maine. However, Skiing With Henry Knox is really not about skiing either, and you certainly don’t have to be a skier to enjoy it. Henry Knox may be best known as the first United States Secretary of War.…
[The following article appeared in The Picton Gazette on July 15, 2019. I am reproducing the full article as a favour to the author. While I haven’t read the book myself, it does come with some great recommendations, which are posted after the article ends. ~James]
A highly decorated high school history teacher from the United States paid a visit to the heart of Loyalist country earlier this month.…
year 2020 marks 265 years since the Acadian Expulsion (Le Grande Dérangement) in 1755. Unfortunately, the outbreak of Covid-19 will likely not allow Acadians to gather together to observe this milestone year. Annually, on August 15th (the actual day of the start of the deportations), Acadians the world over observe their overcoming of the cultural genocide enacted upon them by the British.…
a young age, I’ve always been enthralled by the ocean and what it contains. While I was raised on the edge of Lake Ontario, and the family cottage was on a small lake in Eastern Ontario, lakes didn’t provide a home for whales, sharks, orcas, octopi and other fearsome creatures, not to mention beautiful coral reefs and other mysteries of the deep.…
to one source, 90% of all anorexics are females. They lose a few pounds but are still not satisfied. They become obsessed with reaching the “ideal” weight, but it’s a moving target, practically unattainable. Such is the case with the unnamed young woman in Lightness (Déterrer les os in French) by Quebec author Fanie Demeule, which has been translated into English by Anita Anand.*…
Editions has published Vancouver author and poet Suzanne Chiasson’s first novel, Tacet which at under 200 pages flirts with the novella classification, and due to this brevity, leaves more questions unanswered than answered. It is the story of Charlotte, a singer (of the nightclub type) and Theo, a twentysomething actor who works in a restaurant to pay the rent to his good friend and roommate Curtis.…
Novels, like love and family, take many forms. On every page of Reproduction, his debut novel, Ian Williams finds ways to resist and defy conventional narrative practice while constructing an audacious and uniquely challenging story that crosses generational lines. In the process, he has written a poignant, resonant tale about intersecting lives and the ways that seemingly trivial decisions can have unexpected and far-reaching consequences.…
Powers is a Canadian horror writer who lives in New Brunswick, and Terror in High Water is his first full-length novel. It is a twist on the typical western novel where a bad bunch of hombres ride into a town, terrorizing it until the Marshall arrives with his deputies and cleans up the town. Sound familiar? It’s been the fare of western books and movies throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.…
First-time author Matthew Heneghan is a former Canadian Armed Forces Medic, a former civilian paramedic, and a sufferer of PTSD and a former alcohol abuser. He is also a blogger and podcaster, sharing his story of recovery and day-to-day struggles to cope with his afflictions. Wintertickle Press has now published A Medic’s Mind, his memoirs and they are as good as they come when it proceeds to ‘baring all”.…
the great fascination with Bigfoot/Sasquatch back in the 1970s and 80s? It seemed to die down pretty quickly, and we’ve all but forgotten about the mythical reclusive beasts living in the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the northeastern U.S.
Ottawa-based author Conor McCarthy’s self-published debut novel cleverly resurrects the Sasquatch (or in their language, Mm’tor) idea and puts them (yes, there are more than one) squarely in a story about survival, wilderness exploitation, property development and environmental issues, so that there’s more to this adventure-thriller than meets the eye.…
, Breakwater Books the publisher of Tracey Waddleton’s debut collection of short fiction tweeted a Goodreads review:
I thought that was a pretty good description of Send More Tourists… and aside from the odd ‘Barbie head’ there are a lot of great ‘cookies’ in this collection, too. While some reviewers think that the humorous title befits this book, I think there is a darker side to many of the stories (which I was attracted to), for the reader is immediately introduced to the ubiquitous creature under the bed/in the closet in ‘It Lunged.’…
recently watched the 2013 movie Lee Daniel’s The Butler which I thought notable for vividly depicting the struggle for desegregation in Washington D.C. during the late 1950s and early 1960s by both peaceful and radical means. Viewed through the lens of time, it is even more shocking to think that humans treated other humans less favourably based on skin colour alone.…