by Josephine LoRe Caponata Carla Scarano D’Antonio Dempsey & Windle (2020) ISBN 9781913329228 Carla Scarano D’Antonio’s Caponata arrived late last year and I devoured it in one sitting. Enough time has passed now for the unique flavours to blend as they would in the caponata my mother prepared at the end of every season from…
by Micheline Maylor Forgotten Work Jason Guriel Biblioasis Press (2020) ISBN: 978-1-77196-382-4 Trolling twitter, I find this on Jason Guriel’s feed: “When I started writing nobody rhymed-it was in utter disrepute. Yet rhyme was a siren to me.” – Kay Ryan. Forgotten Work, Guriel’s mammoth novel in verse succumbs to the siren call with its heroic…
by Anne Burke Let This Lake Remember Joan Shillington Frontenac House (2020) ISBN: 9781989466117 In “Truth” the persona of the poet acknowledges the ironic veracity of illusion, based on childhood memories of her father at Lake Wabamun Provincial Park in Alberta. A subsequent nightmarish prose poem deals with the PTSD she suffers even fifty years later. With bated…
By Crystal Mackenzie No Call Too Small by Oscar Martens ISBN: 9781771681957 Oscar Martens’ No Call Too Small is a collection of short stories about moments: a flash, if you will, into pivotal moments of a life. In the title story the reader witnesses the moment a police officer must choose between loyalty to another…
by Skylar Kay This Has Nothing To Do With Youby Lauren CarterFreehand Books (2019)ISBN: 9781988298542 “We were a family that kept secrets.” This quote, which opens a section late in the novel, struck me as important to understanding both the plot and the structure of this well-crafted narrative. The main character, Mel, faces two options as…
by Al Rempel I Will Be Corruptedby Joseph A. DandurandGuernica Editions (2020)ISBN: 9781771835060 Joseph A Dandurand’s thirteenth book of poetry, I Will Be Corrupted, is a powerful work in its depth and craft and beautiful in its simplicity and form. With raw, relentless energy, Dandurand, a member of Kwantlen First Nation on the Fraser River…
by Keith Garebian Swoon Elana Wolff Guernica Editions (2020) ISBN: 9781771835077 Elana Wolff’s sixth poetry collection uses epigraphs that connote various meanings of “swoon:” The Living Torah’s example of Rebecca’s falling off a camel in a shock of elation at seeing Isaac; Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slow swoon of life creeping back; Robert Walser’s example of…
by Skylar Kay The Last Goldfish Anita Lahey Octopus Books (2020) ISBN: 9781771963435 Some books are page turners, keeping readers asking, ‘How will this end? I need to know!’ Lahey’s The Last Goldfish was, for me, not a page turner. I mean that in literally the best way possible, however. It has no air of…
by Carla Scarano In her career as a writer and award-winning poet, Josephine LoRe, who is based in Calgary, Alberta, is a remarkable example of an independent and committed author. She has published two poetry collections, Unity and The Cowichan Series, where poetry and photography merge, as well as a short story, Cornflower. Her work…
by Ryan Stromquist All the Night Gone Sabrina Uswak Stonehouse Publishing (2020) ISBN: 978-1-988754-28-4 All the Night Gone, the debut novel of Sabrina Uswak, is another addition to the pantheon of road trip novels. The story begins with a disappearance: Maybe that’s why Dill left. Being in a place too small with a sky so…