 Note from Editor Editor's Note
by Olga Stein
Our summer issue feels to me like a party where the Irish have been made especially welcome. Guest of honour is Donald Harmon Akenson with his monumental and captivating An Irish History of Civilization. Irish-born Emma Donoghue has dropped by to chat about her novels Slammerkin, and the more recent Life Mask. Also present are Patrick Taylor, Jennifer Johnston and Ronan Bennett.
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| Book Review A Mass of Stones Cast
by Gordon Phinn
John Brigge is a coroner in a small town in the north of England (perhaps modelled on Halifax, perhaps not), circa 1630. His job is "his office, his calling"; whenever there is a "sudden or unnatural death" he must answer duty's call, whether the remains on view might be "no more than a jawbone or a finger, or some parcels of rancid black meat worried up by the dogs.
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 | Zorro
by Isabel Allende
HarperCollins
390 pages $32.95 cloth
ISBN: 0060778970
|  | Tattycoram
by Audrey Thomas
Goose Lane
203 pages $29.95 cloth
ISBN: 0864924313
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Book Review Old Strands Respun into New Tales
by Nancy Wigston
Audrey Thomas and Isabel Allende, two different but equally accomplished writers, pluck fictional characters from obscurity and present them centre stage in their latest novels. Perhaps this trend began with the dazzling disinterment of an intriguing minor character in Jean Rhys's 1966 novel, The Wide Sargasso Sea. The Caribbean-born Rhys made a whole generation take a second look at the woman she called Antoinette Cosway, the "mad woman in the attic" from Charlotte Brontd's Jane Eyre
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| Book Review Another Man Unwilling to Grow Up
by Lisa Salem-Wiseman
It's tempting to read Ray Robertson's fourth novel, Gently Down the Stream, as thinly veiled autobiography. After all, both Robertson and his protagonist, Hank Roberts, have degrees in philosophy from the University of Toronto, both live in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale with their wives (Mary is Hank's, Mara is Ray's) and dogs (Barry is Hank's, Barney is Ray's), and both teach creative writing part time at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies.
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| Book Review A Young Doctor in Training
by Steven W. Beattie
There are words in the English lexicon that anyone who writes book reviews professionally should make every effort to eschew. They are words like "rollicking" or "thrilling" or "gripping" or the odious "unputdownable." Such adjectives are to be avoided because they are clichTs, verbal counters that a reviewer will reach for out of habit if a more original or thoughtful turn of phrase does not spring to mind.
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 | Raise You Five
by Barry Callaghan
McArthur & Co $34.95 cloth
ISBN: 1552784908
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Book Review Gambling Reporter-Poet
by Michael Greenstein
Hemingway once told Morley Callaghan that there are always "four or five people" in the world who are interested in good new writing. Understated and exaggerated, Hemingway's remark offers little consolation to Morley's son, Barry, who quotes Tolstoy's observation that the basis of all good writing is good reporting.
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 | The Memory Man
by Lisa Appignanesi
Arcadia Books
272 pages $24.5 cloth
ISBN: 1900850893
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Book Review The Review of: The Memory Man
by Desmond McNally
I have become a convert-no, not to Judaism, which is such a crucial part of this novel, but to the writings of Lisa Appignanesi. I was aware of her excellent reputation but had not read any of her work until now.
Bruno Lind, a neuroscientist specializing in the functions of the brain and its role in memory recall has arrived in Vienna, the city of his birth
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| Book Review Changes that Scared Early 20thc Canadians
by Clara Thomas
Allan Levine, a Winnipeg historian and well-known writer of both histories and the Sam Klein mystery series, has written a fast-paced and abundantly informative study of early twentieth-century social history. He centres his work on the lives and careers of individuals, giving each chapter an intimate, personalized flavour, the foundation of his work's persuasive excellence.
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| Book Review Enclosing the Creative Commons
by Brian Charles Clark
In recent decades intellectual property (IP) law has become the handmaiden of transnational capitalism. "Fair use", at least in the United States, has become a hollow shell: tap it and it shatters into a thousand sharp-edged lawsuits. Two recent books delve into the history of and effects on creativity resulting from globalized IP law. The overall picture for scientists and artists in all media is gloomy.
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| Book Review The Cultural By-Products of Assassinations
by James Roots
The pistol that allegedly made Thomas D'Arcy McGee the only federal politician in Canadian history to be assassinated was auctioned off recently. It sold for $105,000.00, thankfully to Canada's own Museum of Civilization-although one ponders the irony of a murder weapon being showcased by a museum dedicated to "civilization".
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| Book Review Viewing Civilization Through an Irish Lens
by Brian Fawcett
First thing's first: An Irish History of Civilization is a global literary event, constructed by a remarkable intelligence and a fine writer. Everyone ought to read it. Yes, it's 1500 pages long, but it's completely readable, and it's hard to find a dull or even dry moment in it.
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 | The New Irish Poets
by ed. Selina Guinness
Bloodaxe/Dufour Editions
336 pages $25 paper
ISBN: 1852246731
|  | The Boy with No Face
by Kevin Higgins
Salmon Publishing
69 pages $25 paper
ISBN: 1903392446
| | Fiction
by Conor O'Callaghan
The Wake Forest University Press
72 pages $11.95 paper
ISBN: 1930630239
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Book Review Escaping Novelty
by Chris Jennings
Poetry anthologies thrive on representation and generalization. In particular, they tend to propose that some broad category (nationality, generation, gender, sexuality etc.) reflects and defines the stylistic character of their contents, coaxing accidents of biography into a narrative about a culture's poetics. In turn, each poet's selection supposedly represents the kind of writing he or she does, often serving as a useful sample catalogue of "new" poets you might not otherwise encounter
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| Book Review Column: George Fetherling
by George Fetherling
At one point during the great fire that followed the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, some citizens left off protecting their own homes and businesses to ensure the survival of a house in Hyde Street where Fanny Stevenson lived.
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 | A Brief Lunacy
by Cynthia Thayer
Algonquin Book
241 pages $32.95 cloth
ISBN: 1565124448
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Book Review Thrills to Chill the Summer
by Desmond McNally
The trend these days is for people to take early retirement. This latest offering from Cynthia Thayer might give some folks pause for thought and maybe it'll even convince them to change their plans.
The popular conception is that retirement, at its best, is a time of leisure, travel and relaxation; at its worst, it is simply boring. None of the above characterises the retirement experience in this novel.
Carl and Jessie have retired
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| Book Review The Review of: The Book of Guilt
by Desmond McNally
Picture if you will a large brooding house called "Castle Keep" sitting high on a hill, its outline blurred by mist and screened by a forest. If this setting persuades you that this is yet another tale of a haunted house, then you must be patient and prepare yourself for, as the Monty Python show always promised, "something completely different".
The opening pages of this book pose some intriguing questions.
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 | The Judas Kiss
by Robin Rickards
Trafford
194 pages $21.29 cloth
ISBN: 1412024684
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Book Review The Review of: The Judas Kiss
by Desmond McNally
If you dislike long, complicated tomes then this 'little' novel should suit you perfectly. The use of the adjective 'little' is meant only to indicate the book's length and dimensions, not to diminish this effort by Rickards.
In the opening chapter we are introduced to Dr. Steven del Prado who has discovered seeds from a plant that will not only prolong life, but will make the recipient of its properties shed years, and perhaps even become immortal.
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 | Blood Memory
by Greg Iles
Scribner
512 pages $35.95 cloth
ISBN: 0743234707
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Book Review The Review of: Blood Memory
by Desmond McNally
On the first page of Blood Memory the author cleverly announces, "so we begin in the middle", an artful device, which stirs anticipation for what might follow. Greg Iles, author of seven New York Times best sellers, is a proven master at drawing readers in from the outset. We are immediately told about a series of four murders of men whose ages range between 42 and 69. Each body is strangely mutilated by bite marks on various parts of their bodies
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| Book Review A Brilliant Solipsism
by Hugh Graham
In objecting to a proposed profile of him in Life magazine, William Faulkner, the American South's greatest novelist, declared that he wanted to be "abolished and voided from history," a desire given eerie credence by something in his work that makes it seem authorless: the 'voice' of which we speak so confidently when discussing style, is not really a voice at all but something approaching an alien force.
A talent so otherworldy is in some ways a burden, an illness more than a gift.
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| Book Review Oceanic Divides
by Michael Harris
He Drowns She in the Sea is a green romance that author Shani Mootoo frames with contrasting glimpses at love's fallout-hard-won experience. For Harry St. George, the lover in Mootoo's second novel, it's a journey that traverses race, class and the Pacific Ocean, lifting him from the Caribbean to Canada, from poverty to prosperity, and from the innocence of love's first blush to the gun-shy hesitations of the thwarted heart.
Harry and Rose are our star-crossed lovers.
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 | Grace and Truth
by Jennifer Johnston
McArthur & Company $29.95 cloth
ISBN: 0747267510
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Book Review Playing Out a Familial Mystery
by Beatriz Hausner
Grace and Truth, the 14th novel of Ireland's Jennifer Johnston, is a welcome presence in Canada. The story opens with the scene of the breakup of Sally and her husband Charlie's marriage. The explosive introduction prepares the stage-literally, since Sally is an actress-for the start of the protagonist's quest to find the deeper reasons for the failure of her marriage
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| Book Review Nowhere Woman
by Linda Morra
Camilla Gibb's third novel, Sweetness in the Belly, is a haunting novel. Preceded by two other novels, Mouthing the Words (1999) and The Petty Details of So-and-So's Life (2002), Sweetness in the Belly alternates between London, England, and Harar, Ethiopia. Shifting from one locale to another, it traces the life of a white Muslim nurse, Lily, and the sense of dislocation she experiences when she is initially left in Ethiopia-and when she must subsequently leave Ethiopia.
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| Book Review Where Urban Novels Come From
by Olga Stein
Robert Alter takes his readers on a fascinating tour of 19th century's major cities. Alter hopes to give some impression of these centres' bustle and scope. He aims to convince us of the dislocating strangeness of what, historically speaking, is a 'new' entity-the industrial metropolis.
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| Book Review Squaring the Circle
by Alex Boyd
A certain amount of confusion surrounds prose poetry in English literature. In his introduction to the prose poem anthology, Models of the Universe, David Young suggests that such poems "raid the other world, the world of prose, subverting categories and definitions" and "turning everything inside out for a moment." Prose poems, Young argues, make "vigorous appearances in odd places right up to the present," allowing the poet to put aside the "costume of poetic identity.
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| Interviews Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro
by Kevin Chong
Although Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel, Never Let Me Go, has been touted as a science-fiction novel, this story of cloning and organ donation is a backdrop for some familiar themes in his writing: the slipperiness of memory, the helpless, half-comprehending state of childhood, the elusiveness of happiness.
Never Let Me Go is told by Kath H., a "carer" who watches over "donors" until they make their fourth donation and "complete
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| Interviews Interview with Emma Donoghue: From-Dublin-with-Love Novelist Speaks about Writing and Life in Canada
by Nancy Wigston
Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue. After attending Catholic convent schools in Dublin (and spending a year in NewYork when she was ten), in 1990 Donoghue earned a first-class honours B.A. in English and French from University College Dublin. She completed a Cambridge PhD in 1997, with a thesis on friendship between men and women in 18th century English fiction
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| Letters to Editor Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor,
I'm the author of a novel, Blackbodying, that Books In Canada recently had reviewed by Gordon Phinn. I am not opposed to negative reviews of my work, and as a journalist in my own right I fully understand the need to cultivate a culture of discriminating taste, but I have to say that Mr. Phinn's review seriously misses the mark on a number of fronts.
Firstly, Mr.
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| Essays Reporting: Griffin 2005 Field Notes
by Richard Sanger
June 1, MacMillan Theatre
The Griffin Prize in Poetry is intended to introduce contemporary poetry in English to a wider audience. This year, the audience is younger, groovier and bigger (the event has sold out the MacMillan Theatre in the U of T's Music Building just south of the ROM).
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| Essays Obit: Sheldon Zitner: 1925-2005
by Susan Glickman
Sheldon Zitner died on Tuesday April 26, 2005 of cardiac arrest while recovering from surgical complications. He was 80 years old and had been in poor health for some time, though his mind was as sharp as ever. Born and raised in New York, he taught literature at Grinnell College in Iowa from 1957 to 1969 before becoming a professor at the University of Toronto, which is where I met him.
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| First Novels First Novels
by W.P. Kinsella
In The Bird Factory, Luke Gray is a happy man. He owns a small business that manufactures mobile birds. He has a couple of eccentric employees. His marriage is stable. He has survived an unhappy childhood; his father was a failed documentary filmmaker with an eye for the ladies, and his mother, each time she caught his father philandering, would abandon Luke and his father for months at a time.
Suddenly Luke's wife, Julie, decides she wants a baby.
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| Afterall
by Lee Kvern
Brindle & Glass
122 pages $19.95 paper
ISBN: 1897142013
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First Novels First Novels
by W.P. Kinsella
Afterall brought to mind the scariest moments of my life. I had brought my 3-year-old grandson home for a visit on a chilly March day. We lived in a slummy townhouse complex in Calgary in those days. He immediately went to the playground swings. Five minutes later, I checked on him and he had vanished. I immediately called the police, then walked the complex while my wife waited by the phone. Half an hour later a woman phoned to say he was at No16.
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 | Water Inc
by Varda Burstyn
Verso
291 pages $37 cloth
ISBN: 1859845967
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First Novels First Novels
by W.P. Kinsella
As a fiction writer I was taught, and consequently taught my own students, that if you have an ax to grind, grind it on nonfiction. Burstyn, until now a nonfiction writer, presents a novel that is a supreme ax-grinder. It should have a green cover and be printed on green paper. On a scale of indignation and self-righteousness it rates 99 out of 100.
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 | Garbage Head
by Christopher Williard
Esplanade Books
247 pages $18 paper
ISBN: 1550652060
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First Novels First Novels
by W.P. Kinsella
Garbage Head, by Christopher Williard (Esplanade Books, $18, 247 pages, ISBN: 1550652060). Speaking of ax-grinding, Williard simply wants to say something negative about every aspect of modern society, especially about media and malls. The style, if it can be called a style (people speak sentences into midair, not really expecting answers) is annoying, and the repetition mind-numbing. This is the opening of the novel:
The realtor says, "Acorn Street is the perfect place
to live.
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| First Novels First Novels
by W. P. Kinsella
There is not a lot to say about this competently written female coming of age story (except for this bit: "Allegra went to a place that specialized in tea that looked like a haunted house..."). Alice, a Toronto girl, has managed to get to first year at McGill University in Montreal without even having a boyfriend, let alone having sex.
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews
by Angela Narth
Describing a novel such as The Mapmaker's Opera is as difficult as trying to capture the essence of a rainbow on film. Toronto author BTa Gonzalez, a Canadian of Spanish descent, tells a story within an opera within a book. This is the author's second novel, a strong follow-up to her critically acclaimed 1998 work The Bitter Taste of Time.
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews: Memoir/Politics
by Christopher Ondaatje
In a book strangely reminiscent of George Orwell's early non-fiction (The Road to Wigan, Homage to Catalonia) Nick Ryan's Homeland is the story of one man's journey into the heartlands of extremism undertaken during a gruelling six-year voyage.
Ryan met, interviewed, and in some cases lived with members of the extreme right in a dozen different countries. He examines this far right community, from the vilest new-nazi gangs to some prominent politicians.
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| Brief Reviews Brief Reviews: Photojournalism
by John Oughton
The continuing violence in Iraq seems much less remote when you've lived there. My year-and-a-half sojourn in Baghdad was a long time ago, during the 1958-63 reign of Abdul Karim Qassim, who had overthrown the British-appointed King Faisal. I was 13, old enough to remember that small country's enormous contrasts, both within itself, and with Canada.
Iraq is a paradox: few places in the world have been so long inhabited by such a variety of civilizations (Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian).
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 | The Conch Bearer
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Aladin Paperbacks
265 pages $8.5 paper
ISBN: 0689872429
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Children's Books Kids' Lit
by M. Wayne Cunningham
When 12-year-old Anand nearly bursts a blood vessel wishing for his miserable life to change, he gets far more than he hoped for. And thanks to the storytelling skills of India-born, Texas-based author and creative writing teacher Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, 8- to 12-year-olds worldwide now have a first-rate, page-turning tale of magic, mystery and mayhem that ranges from the humble street bazaars of Kolkata to the majestic mountains of the Himalayas.
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| Children's Books Kids' Lit
by M. Wayne Cunningham
When 13-year-old Chinese student Ma Yan began her diary on September 2, 2000, she had no idea her mother would give it to French journalist, Pierre Haski, nor that his newspaper stories about it would revolutionise the world for the school children of Ningxia and the residents of her village of Zhangjiashu. But that is what happened, and "revolutionise" is not too strong a word.
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 | Kira-Kira
by Cynthia Kadohata
Atheneum
256 pages $23.5 cloth
ISBN: 0689856393
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Children's Books Kids' Lit
by Antony Di Nardo
Young readers and adults alike will be moved by Katie's story in Kira-Kira. Katie is Lynn's younger sister and her first person narrative chronicles the special relationship between these two young people. It's a story told from the heart about family love and, especially, about sibling love. It's a story about dealing with the death of a loved one.
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