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Book Reviews in November 1993 Issue

The Best of the Group of Seven
by Joan Murray,

pages $14.99 PT
ISBN: 0771066740
People from Our Side A Life Story with Photographs & Oral Biography
by Peter Pitseolak, Dorothy H. Eber, Ann Hanson,

168 pages $55 TC
ISBN: 0773509968
Frame of Mind Viewpoints on Photography in Contemporary Canadian Art
by Daina Augaitis,

pages $40 TP
ISBN: 0920159540
Historic Fort York
by Carl Benn,

pages $29.95 TP
ISBN: 0920474799
A Pictorial History of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia
by J. Philip McAleer,

160 pages $19.95 PF#TP
ISBN: 0929112199
Marble Woman
by Yuri Dojc,

pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 189556526X
Prairie Skies
by Courtney Milne, C. Milne, Courtney Milne,

128 pages $34.95 TC
ISBN: 1895618150
Book Review
Techniques of Imagination
by Richard Perry
The erotic meets the esoteric in the season's coffee-table titles.
Read more...
The Mirrormaker
by David Thompson,

pages $24.95 TC
ISBN: 0002240092
Gypsy Sins
by John Lawrence Reynolds, Lawrence J. Reynolds,

0 pages $22.95 TC
ISBN: 0002242524
There Was an Old Woman
by Howard Engel,

320 pages $16.99 TP
ISBN: 0670852597
Death by Degrees
by Eric Wright,

224 pages $25.95 TC
ISBN: 0684196484
Book Review
Widening the Investigation
by Robin Skelton
The best detective stories make community an integral part of criminality.
Read more...
Pursued by Furies
pages $37 TC
ISBN: 0394220641
Book Review
Dark Days Always Pressing
by Birk Sproxton
Gordon Bowker's biography of Malcolm Lowry features a steadiness of purpose, a concern for truth as conventionally understood, and a quiet, understated style - virtues seemingly unknown to the fiery and mercurial Lowry.
Read more...
Fade to Black
by Skene,

pages $18.95 TC
ISBN: 1550540890
Book Review
Turn Off, Tune Out
by George Galt
Most Canadians don't give a damn about the CBC. The real problem is that the English-language television network hasn't earned the loyalty and affection of enough viewers. Fewer and fewer taxpayers watch it.
Read more...
Forests of the Medieval World
by Don Coles,

64 pages $9.95 TP
ISBN: 0889841586
Book Review
Complaint and Celebration
by Marlene Cookshaw
The poems are both complaint and celebration of the belief, expressed in the last tine of the closing poem, that "an hour's immortal even if a life isn't."
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Line Screw My Twelve Riotous Years Working Behind Bars in Some of Canada's Toughest Jails
by J. Michael Yates,

pages $29.99 TC
ISBN: 077109082X
Book Review
Nobody's Pushover
by Jack Batten
You probably figure there isn't another tragic story from the big house, another wacko anecdote about a colourful con or a sadistic guard, another boring statistic about the failure of the penitentiary system, that you really want to hear again.
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Sweet Poison
by Margaret Gibson,

pages $22.95 TC
ISBN: 0006475140
Any Time at All & Other Stories
by Joyce Marshall,

pages $6.95 PT
ISBN: 0771098936
Saints & Runners Stories & a Novella
by Libby Scheier,

pages $14.5 PF
ISBN: 1551280043
Book Review
The Inner Lives of Women
by Carole Giangrande
Scheier doesn't yet have the knack of developing characters, not with the depth required for a longer form of writing. Her creations could be fascinating people if she would remove their placards and just let them live.
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United We Fall The Crisis of Democracy in Canada
458 pages $29.99
ISBN: 0670851914
In the Rapids Navigating the Future of First Nations
288 pages $25.99
ISBN: 0670853275
Fight for Canada
by D. Orchard,

pages $17.95 PT
ISBN: 0773755691
Book Review
Divided We Stand
by Christopher Moore
United We Fall is the kind of book Brian Mulroney might write if he were to join a therapy group for failed prime ministers and try to work out all that bitterness. It's hardly an analysis of the Charlottetown accord.
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Apocalypse Jazz
by Maggie Helwig,

pages $25.95 TC
ISBN: 0887509231
A Canada of Light
by B. W. Powe,

128 pages $13.95 TP
ISBN: 1895897890
Book Review
What Fresh Hells are These
by Ted Whittaker
If Canada becomes a Third World country, we may realize that all we got is rhythm, along with the secret thrill of knowing that we're richly ambiguous creatures inhabiting the exemplary, evolving "state without walls."
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Writing on the Wall
by H. Bannerji,

pages $14.95 PT
ISBN: 0920661300
Returning the Gaze Essays on Racism, Feminism & Politics
by Himani Bannerji,

372 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 0920813550
Book Review
Rhetorics of Persuasion
by Lakshmi Gill
It seems to me that these two books aim to modify the sensibility of a white reading public that, out of apathy, has somehow missed the dialectics - begun by Nietzsche and re-conceptualized by French Marxist sociology in the past 60 years.
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The Jaguar & the Anteater Pornography Degree Zero
by Bernard Arcand, Wayne Grady,

320 pages $40.95 TC
ISBN: 0860914461
Book Review
Polyvalent Phenomena
by Maggie Helwig
Even if you discount Bernard Arcand's defensive tone and the inevitable problems of translation, it remains a very odd book, a rambling intellectual study of pornography that suddenly pulls up into a most unexpected conclusion.
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Betty Lee Bonner Lives There Stories
by Lois Simmie,

192 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 155054134X
Book Review
Renewed Expectations
by Kathryn Woodward
No pinches of odd historical detail liven up these stories; they are not necessary. Nor are there any beautiful-plus-wildly-successful characters.
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Overdue Assignment Taking Responsibility for Canada's Schools
by Graham Orpwood, Jennifer Lewington,

264 pages $26.95 TC
ISBN: 0471640476
School's Out
by Andrew Nikiforuk,

224 pages $19.95 CT
ISBN: 092191248X
Book Review
Learning Curves
by George Kaufman
Criticizing our schools has become a growth industry, spawning numerous newspaper and magazine articles, TV special reports, and books.
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A Child Is Not a Toy Voices of Children in Poverty
by Sheila Baxter,

246 pages $14.95 PT
ISBN: 0921586264
On the Edge
by Tracey,

pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 1550541269
Book Review
Anger and Hope
by Phil Hall
There are too many days when such optimism sounds just plain dumb, no matter how well it's expressed. So here are books to read on such days. You can't pay the rent? Voting seems ludicrous? Here are lives, voices, and tools, reminders of anger and hope.
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The Defense Never Rests
by Bruce Dowbiggin,

pages $26.95 TC
ISBN: 0002550652
Book Review
Game Misconduct
by Brian Fawcett
There is a great deal of uneasy talk these days among authors about how publishers' marketing departments are becoming the de facto editors within the industry, choosing not just which books are sellable, but also determining what the books will contain.
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Interviews
Committed to Excellence
by Elaine Kalman
Louis Dudek is an apostle of high culture and hard work.
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Letters to Editor
Letters to the Editor
Children's book authors and illustrators are professionals. While the work they create may seem simple, these creators spend years working on books before they can be published.
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Prose/Poetry
Flying Blind - excerpt
by Robert Harlow
No one should name a baby until they've lived with it long enough to find out who it is. A child comes with a personality, and part of bonding with it should be finding out what its name is.
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Profiles
Its Own Amazing Order
by Beverley Daurio
My impression of Moure as sceptical about how information is presented in the media is supported by her own poetry and essays.
Read more...
Dawson City Seven
by Don Reddick,

pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 0864921586
Don't Fence Me In A Romance of the New West
by David Poulsen,

168 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0889951098
Dead & Living
by Jane Bow,

pages $15.95 TC
ISBN: 0920544967
Losing Eddie A Novel
by Deborah J. Corey,

238 pages $21.95 TC
ISBN: 094557567X
I Can Hear Me Fine
by Smith,

pages $9.95 PF
ISBN: 0969711204
First Novels
First Novels - Leagues of Their Own
by Gary Draper
Much of the book's humour arises from the interplay between Doc and others, especially his sometime roommate Doug.
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George Fetherling
Last Words - Flashes and Fizzles
by Alec McEwen
'Ecotage', which came into use about 20 years ago, is a shortened combination of ecology and sabotage, both of which made their first appearance in the 19th century.
Read more...
Come Back to Me My Language Poetry & the West Indies
by J. Edward Chamberlin,

University of Illinois Press
328 pages $44.95 CT
ISBN: 0252019733
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Ramabai Espinet
The connectedness of Caribbean poetry to the merging of the sensual and the spiritual is explored with a poet's sense of language and a scholar's thoroughness.
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Firing the Heather The Life & Times of Nellie McClung
by Mary Hallett, Marilyn Davis,

pages $26.95 TC
ISBN: 1895618207
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Allan Casey
At the turn of the century, a Canadian woman cast no vote, was excluded from the machinery of state and church government, and came by wealth only through husband and father.
Read more...
Spasm Virtual Reality, Android Music & Electric Flesh
by Arthur Kroker, Bruce Sterling,

Saint Martin's Press, Incorporated
196 pages $19.95 CR#TC
ISBN: 031209681X
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Stanley Fogel
Those of you with the sharpest of memories (intact, no doubt, because of an aversion to accelerated postmodem civilization and its discontents) will already know me. I am Books in Canada's designated Kroker reviewer.
Read more...
Letters of Love & Duty The Correspondence of Susanna & John Moodie
by Carl Ballstadt,

360 pages $35 TC
ISBN: 080205708X
Brief Reviews
Brief reviews - Non-fiction
by Laurel Boone
The lengthy introductions in 'Letters of Love and Duty' are poorly organized and dull, and in places they merely summarize the letters and annotations.
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Who He? Reflections on a Writing Life
by Robert Collins,

208 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 1550541323
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Roger Mason
If other memoirs are half as engaging as this, we may end up with a reasonably balanced view of the period, not to mention a storehouse of scandalous anecdotes.
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Singing for the Joy of It
by Joan G. Maloney, Michael Maloney,

99 pages $14.95 SP
ISBN: 0969557906
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Donna Dunlop
Throughout this spiral-bound book are constant and encouraging reminders to enjoy yourself as you begin to discover or develop your own voice, which is, Maloney emphasizes, as individual as your handwriting.
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A Fine Grammar of Bones
by Meira Cook,

pages $9.95 TP
ISBN: 0888011717
The Last Photo of the Human Soul
by Bill Bissett,

144 pages $15.95 TP
ISBN: 088922322X
Borderwatch
93 pages $9.95
ISBN: 0919417302
The Gathering Stones for the Medicine Wheel
by Gregory Scofield,

96 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0919591744
Grasping Men's Metaphors
by S. Nelson,

pages $12.95 PT
ISBN: 0919754503
Mosquito Nirvana
by Ted Plantos,

88 pages $12 TC
ISBN: 0919897363
Ghost Works
by Daphne Marlatt,

pages $14.95 PT
ISBN: 0920897398
In Hardy Country
by Tom Dawe,

pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 1550810561
Why Is Snow So White?
by F. H. Low-Beer,

64 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 1550820575
Gypsy Hymns
by Vernon Mooers,

64 pages $8.95 TP
ISBN: 189538723X
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by George Elliott Clarke
Politicos aren't the only ones with X-like "messages" to deliver this fall. Canadian poets discuss neocoloniatism, racism, sexism, and pollution in several new collections.
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Stones of the Dalai Lama
by Ken Mitchell,

328 pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 0939149796
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Roger Mason
Mitchell writes with a kind of avuncular jolliness that has its attraction and also goes some way towards leavening the deliberate pacing and uneasy diction of the novel.
Read more...
Virtual Light
by William Gibson,

Bantam Books
336 pages $21.95 TC
ISBN: 0553074997
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Daniel Jones
Stripped of their futuristic hardware and software and of their dystopian settings, William Gibson's novels and stories are, for the most part, straightforward adventure tales of the sort that have long appealed to adolescent readers, particularly boys.
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An Aroma of Coffee
by Dany Laferriere,

pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 1550542648
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Kathleen Byrne
The book recreates in gentle, almost lulling tones the deceptively placid summer of a 10-year-old boy, who watches the world go by from grandmother's front porch in the village of Petit-Goave.
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No Words for Love & Famine A Novel
by Roberta Morris,

154 pages $13.95 TP
ISBN: 0920953530
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Bradd Burningham
In the face of mass starvation, how are we to take our own desires, concerns, and tribulations seriously? This is a question most have asked but few have answered, except by setting it aside. But what happens when the question won't go away?
Read more...
The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon
by W. O. Mitchell,

144 pages $18.99 TC
ISBN: 0771060815
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Donna Dunlop
An entertaining tale of two cutting teams engaged in a gently unscrupulous and comic competition, it is set in the Prairie town of Shelby, Alberta, a locale readers wilt recall from Mitchell's 1990 novel 'Roses Are Difficult Here'.
Read more...
A Country Not Considered Canada, Culture, Work
by Tom Wayman,

179 pages $15.95 TP
ISBN: 088784538X
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Allan Casey
Wayman writes passionately about the writers who have helped him shape his own art of the gritty here and now. In the final essay titled "Sitting by the Grave of Literary Ambition," he distances himself spiritually from his own workaday world as a writer.
Read more...
Little Paper that Grew
408 pages $29.95
ISBN: 0919233392
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Allan Levine
Behind most successful newspapers lurks a publisher or editor possessing an array of necessary attributes intelligence, ambition, a good business sense, and often a large ego -who shapes and guides the paper.
Read more...
Alison's House
by Maxine Trottier, Michael Martchenko,

32 pages $5.95 TP
ISBN: 019540968X
Nature in the Home
by David Suzuki, Kim Fernandes, Eugenie Fernandes,

32 pages $6.95 TP
ISBN: 0773755861
The Trouble with Justin
by Don Gillmor, Harvey Chan,

pages $13.95 CT
ISBN: 0888991770
Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall
by Leo Yerxa,

32 pages $16.95 CT
ISBN: 0888991835
TV Sal and the Game Show from Outer Space
34 pages $14.95
ISBN: 0889950938
Sasha & the Wiggly Tooth
by Rhea Tregebov, Helene Desputeaux,

24 pages $5.95 TP
ISBN: 0929005503
Mother Holle
by Charlotte Dorn, Peter Becker,

pages $8.95 PF
ISBN: 1550820435
Children's Books
Children's Books - Home Truths
by Janet McNaughton
Childhood is full of milestones - first smile, first steps, first word, first day of school. We reached a milestone in our house this summer, albeit one of the less celebrated ones.
Read more...
At Large
At Large - Revised Versions
by Michael Coren
Mercenary authors grope around for subjects that will sell sufficient books to justify the distended advances paid by eager publishers. The writers then indulge in necrophilia, in a literary screwing of the dead.
Read more...
Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - Artistic References
by Douglas Fetherling
You can take some satisfaction in knowing that the compiler, writer, copy-editor, proofreader, designer, production manager, and chief financial officer is also the guy who wraps the parcels.
Read more...
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