by Arjun Basu Long-time readers will probably know how often I like to go out on a limb and suggest some fairly outlandish things––making presumptions about deeper meanings or even an author’s mentality when settling in on specific techniques used. While the discussions that result can sometimes feel not far off from taking a stab…
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by Kim Moritsugu Looks Perfect is about the fashion-editor extraordinaire for Panache magazine, Rosemary, and her romantic entanglements. While covering the ready-to-wear collections in Europe and New York, she keeps bumping into Brian Turnbull––the sexy and rich owner of multiple fashion magazines. The first half of the book involves his extramarital fling with Rosemary, along…
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by Ann Y. K. Choi I seem to be finding it harder and harder to give an author the benefit of the doubt while reading, and I think it’s becoming a problem. The realization came partway through Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety after reading something particularly unsubtle or repetitive and putting the book down, likely more…
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by Gary Barwin No TV for Woodpeckers is Barwin’s collection of experimental poetry. In the first section, “Needleminer,” the author takes a number of poems by other authors––representative of the industrial Hamilton landscape, from what he explains––and populates it with flora and fauna found throughout the area by replacing nouns from the source poems with…
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by Terry Fallis One Brother Shy is narrated by Alex MacAskill, an Ottawa developer working on the latest and greatest face-recognition software. He takes care of his ailing mother and, because of a mysterious, traumatic event in his past, he suffers from an almost debilitating shyness, so bad he can barely look coworkers in the…
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by Grace O’Connell Be Ready for the Lightning follows the narrator Veda’s life before and after a traumatic event––being trapped aboard a Manhattan bus during a violent hostage situation. The story centres around the fractious relationship between Veda, her brother, Conrad, and their core group of friends as they all attempt to approach normalcy in…
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by Gary Barwin Yiddish for Pirates follows Moishe’s journey from being a young boy on the shtetl to captain of a pirate ship in the late fifteenth century. Narrated by Aaron, the African grey parrot who chose Moishe’s shoulder as his perch, the story tells of Moishe’s attempts to help Yids flee persecution during the…
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by Terry Fallis After five demoralizing years in Canadian politics, Daniel Addison decides to quit his job as speechwriter to the leader of the Opposition Liberals to start teaching English at the University of Ottawa. (The decision came shortly after unintentionally witnessing his girlfriend’s late-night “political discourse” with the House Leader.) But, as a last…
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by Jean E. Pendziwol The Lightkeeper’s Daughters follows Elizabeth, a blind woman living at a nursing home, and Morgan, a teen forced to perform community service cleaning the graffiti she spray-painted on the nursing home’s fence. After Elizabeth’s father’s old journals are recovered from a shipwreck, she enlists Morgan to help her go through them,…
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by Cordelia Strube In my final review related to the International Festival of Authors, something that hasn’t happened since I think The Fault in Our Stars repeated itself. You see, all the characters in On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light have very clear voices, but one in particular had the wrong one initially….
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