| Book Review A Review of: The Rose, An Illustrated History
by Olga Stein
Not so much a book as a statement in decoration, The Rose is gorgeous
from start to finish-from cover design to the hundreds of exquisite
etchings, water colour, and oil paint illustrations within. You'll
find the rose in its infinite variety, as it grows in a well-tended
garden, on mountain or windswept island, in marshland or forest.
According to Harkness, "the exact number of rose species is still
unknown," but he gives us the following breakdown: "Forty-eight are
native to China, and are found nowhere else; forty-two occur in the
rest of Asia, including some of those also in China; thirty-two occur
...
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|  | The Morning Star
by Nick Bantock
Raincoast Books $24.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1551926210
|
Book Review A Review of: The Morning Star
by Olga Stein
The Morning Star (In which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin
& Sabine Is Illuminated) appears to be the last in his Griffin &
Sabine book series. This one is no less enchanting than the other
five. The layout and artwork-messages hand-scribbled on postcards,
combined with images portraying ancient civilizations and figures from
mythology-is magnificent, evoking a sense of the exotic and
other-worldly. You feel as if you're sifting through the contents on
an ancient trunk, with each fingered object promising to yield some
valuable insight.
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada
by W. J. Keith
I may or may not be an appropriate reviewer for this book, since the
editors' introduction includes the now almost predictable barb about
the provincial nature of "Toronto regionalism." I am, however, no
friend of what I have come to call global rootlessness, and can claim
a reasonable awareness of historical tradition and context. One aim of
this collection, after all, is to spread the reputation of the poets
represented beyond the boundaries of Atlantic Canada. So be it.
This anthology contains specimens of the work of sixty poets. A dozen
or so are already fairly well known, and I am happy to report that I
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Vacancies
by Jeffery Donaldson
The word vacancy is surely more cheerful than other terms of
emptiness: gap, fissure, gulf, hole, void. These latter terms point to
something missing, a lack or absence of what might otherwise still be
there. A vacancy on the other hand is full of promise and opportunity;
the suite is vacant; no one has preceded you or laid claim to what
might be yours; you are free to move in. Of course vacancies, where
property is concerned, are more associated with rentals than with
owned accommodation. You can make your deposit, transport and arrange
your things, but the place isn't yours to keep, and eventually, when
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: RIDICULOUS! The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam
by Keith Garebian
What sort of performers would Bette Midler, Charles Busch, Harvey
Fierstein, and the original cast of Saturday Night Live have been
without the influence of Charles Ludlam? Actor, director, designer,
and the author of 29 plays who ran his own acting company for two
decades in a small theatre way off Broadway before his death from AIDS
in 1987 at the age of 44, Ludlam was a promulgator of the Ridiculous-a
sensibility that turned to drag, camp, parody, and burlesque in order
to undermine political, sexual, and cultural categories. The
Ridiculous is comedy beyond the absurd, frequently in structures that
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Theories of Relativity
by Heather Birrell
Sixteen-year-old Dylan is alone, on the streets, panhandling at the
foot of a glass office tower for money to buy his next meal. How did
he get there? And how long will he stay? These are questions Barbara
Haworth-Attard attempts to answer in her excellent young teen (ages
12-14) novel, Theories of Relativity. In this spare and
straightforward first person narration, Dylan tells it as he sees it,
describing the flaxen-haired beauty, Jenna, he first spots begging
across the street from his post, and her sinister pimp, nicknamed
Vulture, with equal parts clear-eyed honesty and cynical teenage
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Adventures of Tommy Smith
by Heather Birrell
The year is 1882, and the place, Collingwood, Ontario. Tommy Smith, a
plucky underdog and orphan of the twelve-year-old redheaded variety,
uses his mouth organ to tame skittish horses, and likes to sit on the
shores of Lake Huron, dreaming of his long lost family. But this
relatively peaceful existence is shattered when his curiosity draws
him to the offices of the Northern Navigation Company. There, he
overhears not only an argument regarding the passenger ship S.S. Asia,
but also witnesses a murder. Unfortunately, the murderer also spies
little Tommy, and the adventures of the title are (quite literally)
...
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|  | In Abby's Hands
by Wendy Lewis
Fitzhenry & Whiteside $19.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0889952825
|
Book Review A Review of: In AbbyÆs Hands
by Olga Stein
In Abby's Hands is a book for younger readers which tackles mature
themes-birth, death, and the fragility of life. Abby has a special
relationship with her pregnant dog Opal. Opal was born on the same day
her grandmother Opal had died. Now, about to deliver a litter, Opal
stays close to Abby, needing the reassuring proximity of her friend.
In the afternoon Abby's Grandpa, Jack, has an accident while trying to
move an old tire into the puppy pen, and Abby's mother must drive him
to the hospital. Abby is left alone with Opal, and it is at this time
that Opal goes into labour. Abby is terrified. She understands that
...
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|  | Diary of a Wombat
by Jackie French
Harper Collins Canada $19.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0002005611
|
Book Review A Review of: Diary of a Wombat
by Olga Stein
This is a delightful book for young readers. Little wombat's days
consist of simple activities-eating, playing and sleeping, but each
day she finds some new way to amuse herself and thereby introduce a
small measure of chaos around her. She tears to shreds the doormat of
a nearby home, then chews a hole through the kitchen door because the
people inside don't respond to her demands for carrots. When she finds
the hole boarded up the next day, she bangs up the garbage can until
her demands are met. She digs a hole in the flower garden in order to
make herself new sleeping quarters. Next, she overturns a ladder with
...
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|  | The Subway Mouse
by Barbara Reid
Scholastic Canada $21.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0439974682
|
Book Review A Review of: The Subway Mouse
by Olga Stein
The Subway Mouse has just been nominated for a Governor General's
award in the category of kids' lit illustration, and it's plain to see
why. Reid's plasticine art is remarkable. The illustrations of her
book are like relief paintings-colourful and detailed, while the
three-dimensionality of everything depicted makes you want to reach
out and touch what you see. Reid is a master at what she does.
The writing isn't as compelling as the illustration, but good enough,
and the plot is clever and will keep young readers interested until
the end. The story works like a mini epic voyage. Little mouse is born
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Transient Dancing
by Nancy Wigston
Actor, singer, novelist, Gale Zo Garnett's stories are infused with
flair and drama. Not for her the moody study of depression in the
North. Her first novel, Visible Amazement, unfolded the coming-of-age
of young Roanne Chappell, a talented cartoonist, whose bohemian mother
had moved from London to British Columbia to pursue her art. Bolting
after her sexuality clashed with her mother's, Roanne began a journey
that took her to California, where she discovered kind men and damaged
girls. Such was Garnett's sparkling talent for writing character and
scene that we hardly noticed the improbability of a girl discovering
...
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|  | The Hours
by Michael Cunningham
Vhps Trade $19.99 Paperback
ISBN: 0312243022
|
Book Review A Review of: The Hours
by Cindy MacKenzie
As evidenced by the change in cover design that now features three
"superstar" actresses, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole
Kidman, the release of director Stephen Daldry's highly lauded 2002
film adaptation of Michael Cunningham's The Hours has promoted a
resurgence of interest in the 1998 Pulitzer-prize winning novel.
Unlike so many adaptations of book to film, the two forms of this
novel are, in fact, highly complementary in their sensitive and
beautifully-wrought treatment of the dark terrains of madness,
depression, and homoeroticism that inform the pervading theme of love.
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The InquisitorsÆ Manual
by Maurice Mierau
To say that Portuguese novelist Antnio Lobo Antunes is influenced by
Conrad and Faulkner is merely to acknowledge that the sky is blue on
many summer days. Antunes, like most Latin American novelists, is
consumed with Faulknerian style; his torrential
stream-of-consciousness prose can seem chokingly baroque. As with
Joseph Conrad, Antunes is fascinated by the way in which politics and
colonialism create a master narrative for both novels and societies.
Antunes spent two years as a medical psychiatrist with the Portuguese
army in Angola in the 1970s, about which he wrote in his breakthrough
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle
by Steven W. Beattie
Florence, the narrator of Monique Proulx's latest novel, The Heart Is
an Involuntary Muscle, doesn't like novels. As she puts it, "In a
300-page book, there are always 250 pages too many. Reading books
slows you down, it softens you, it wipes you out. When you open a
book, a particularly underhanded book, you're neutralized for hours,
the captive of this corpulent mass that isn't even true, a creation
that some neurotic fabricated out of the worst of his neuroses, the
better to unload it on you and get it out of his life." Distilled,
Florence is bemoaning a deficiency of what Ray Robertson has called
...
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|  | Yellow Dog
by Martin Amis
Knopf Canada $35.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0676976166
|
Book Review A Review of: Yellow Dog
by Matt Sturrock
Those early reports from overseas did not bode well. Yellow Dog, the
first novel we've seen from Martin Amis in eight years, was having the
hide flayed from its bones by the British press. Friends, foes, former
fans, and erstwhile well-wishers were all lining up to lend a hand
with the excoriation. One reckless bravo, a novelist looking to secure
a provocateur reputation of his own, wrote in The Telegraph that the
book "isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing," but
instead is "not-knowing-where-to-look-bad"-a literary embarrassment
for the reader, not unlike learning that your favourite uncle had been
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Frankie & Stankie
by Nancy Wigston
This novel by South African-raised Barbara Trapido belongs to the
bildungsroman tradition: child is born, child grows up, child leaves
home. In this case, Dinah, in infancy dubbed Tinymite, steals the
narrative show from the beginning. By the unwritten rules of the
genre, we know that the spotlight will focus on Dinah and not on her
elder sister Lisa, a.k.a. Angel-face, later virtually eliminating the
older child in favour of the weedy, asthmatic, imaginative younger
sib. In one of Dinah's childhood games, the names "Frankie and
Stankie" emerge from her unique reading of an Italian worker's song
...
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|  | A Good Man
by Cynthia Holz
Thomas Allen $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 088762118X
|
Book Review A Review of: A Good Man
by Maureen Lennon
In her third novel, Toronto writer Cynthia Holz addresses a serious
subject-the transference of memories from Holocaust survivors to
subsequent generations. As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the
end of the war, children born after 1945 to Holocaust survivors are
now becoming grandparents, which means that the memories of their
parents are about to pass into the consciousness of a third post-war
generation. Consequently, there are thousands of readers for whom this
subject is relevant.
Holz divides her novel into two sections: the first part tells a story
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Short Fiction: An Anthology
by Clara Thomas
Sullivan and Levene have given us an anthology well fitted for the
tried and true "Desert Island" game: it would be a satisfying
companion for any castaway enthusiast for the short story. Expansive
and comprehensive, its selections, from a international range of
writers, are designed to satisfy an equally wide range of tastes. In
their Preface the editors describe their rationale: "We believe no
contemporary anthology can be prescriptive. Teaching is, after all, a
product of discussion, and multiple readings are not only possible,
but also truthful to the experience of fiction." The collection's
...
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|  | Twenty-six
by Leo McKay Jr.
McClelland & Stewart $32.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0771054750
|
Book Review A Review of: Twenty-Six
by Craig MacBride
The book is dedicated to memories; that is the first thing a reader
should know. The second thing to know is that death is the first word
in the novel, and, nearly 400 pages later, life is the final word.
Twenty-Six, like the axis on which its stories revolve, is a neat
package, with death leading to an understanding of life. Bordering on
clich? Perhaps, and yet the journey to that understanding is powerful,
well plotted, and sometimes terribly, tragically funny.
The novel is split into five parts-1988, 1982, 1988, 1987 and 1989-and
it is bound by one event, an explosion in a coalmine that kills 26
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy
by Jeremy Lott
I should probably begin with the caveat that those who aren't at least
sympathetic to the idea that Joss Whedon is a genius should not read
this book. For practical purposes, if you didn't like Toy Story, the
dialog in Speed, that obscene remark by Wolverine in the first X-Men
movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, not the
movie), Angel, or the short lived series Firefly, by all means give
Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy a pass. Come to think of it, this
review might not be to your liking either; no hard feelings if you
turn the page.I should probably begin with the caveat that those who
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life
by Christopher Ondaatje
For whatever reasons, Martha Gellhorn never wanted a biography of
herself. When Carl Rollyson published one in 1990, Gellhorn wrote a
furious ten-page letter listing his errors of fact and called the book
a "paean of hate". Undeterred, Rollyson republished it (with
corrections) after Gellhorn died in 1998. Caroline Moorehead's new
biography is a much better book than Rollyson's, though quite long and
full of gossip. But its very quality raises the same issue as the
first book in a more acute form: is Gellhorn really worth a biography?
Her chief claim on the attention of posterity is twofold: First, she
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of The Klondike
by George Fetherling
Jennifer Duncan's Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of the Klondike, is
most captivating in the first 40 pages. There Duncan recounts the
events, and degrees, by which a downtown Toronto short story writer
can become a Yukonophile. It is a memoir both hilarious and touching,
as she recounts how she worked up the resolve to spend a winter in
Dawson.
She could have made an entire book of this Bloor-Street-in-exile
stuff, with the roar of spring break-up in the Yukon River competing
with the resounding clash of two of Canada's cultures. But she
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: A Love of Reading, The Second Collection: More Reviews of Contemporary Fiction
by Bruce Meyer
Reading is something that everyone does, but how one does it is
peculiarly personal. There are deep readers, penetrating minds such as
Northrop Frye or Harold Bloom, who can peer into the crystal ball of
miasmal authors and perceive a fearful symmetry amid the seeming chaos
of the most complex imaginations. There are connective readers who
cannot help but play a kind of mental join-the-dots every time they
encounter a new text, delighted in the belief that all knowledge is
interrelated. Then there are the writer-readers, those keeners like
Dante, who have to be literally led by the hand through the worlds of
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Eatonians: The Story of the Family Behind the Family
by Anne Cimon
Patricia Phenix, author of the national bestseller Olga Romanov:
Russia's Last Grand Duchess, has chosen a very different subject for
her newest book, Eatonians. Another non-fiction title, it covers the
rise and fall of a Canadian institution, Eaton's department stores. I
found it as engrossing as David Halberstam's 1996 bestseller, The
Fifties.
Phenix ably collages a story full of human interest from her boundless
research. The author explains in the "Acknowledgements", that she
wanted to give due to the huge family of employees who, over 130
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Chronicle of a War Foretold: How Mideast Peace Became AmericaÆs Fight
by Michael Hale
Watching from an ocean-and really, an entire world-away, the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute tends to look fairly simple. Brutal, but
simple. Two sides, divided by religion and years of war, are at each
others' throats, and civilians are paying the price with their lives.
Follow the North American media coverage, and you're likely to get the
impression that a few extremists on each side are prolonging a war the
majority does not want any part of. But it isn't that simple. As
Norman Spector points out in Chronicle of a War Foretold: How Mideast
Peace Became America's Fight, peace efforts are hamstrung as much by
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: September 11: Consequences for Canada
by Rondi Adamson
On the back of Kent Roach's September 11: Consequences for Canada, the
fact that two of Roach's previous tomes have been short-listed for the
Donner Prize for best public policy book is presented as a selling
point. But the Donner Prize is sort of like the Academy Awards for
technical stuff-an event held in a non-glamorous hotel, hosted by a
second rate celebrity. The very term "public policy book" is enough to
put the most restless sleepers down for the night.
For policy books, while often important, are usually written by
academics. In other words, the prose may not soar, but the content
...
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|  | Platform
by Michel Houellebecq
Knopf $38 Hardcover
ISBN: 0375414622
|
Book Review A Review of: Platform
by David Solway
Michel Houellebecq's (pronounced Wellbeck, aspirated) Platform has
been reviewed and discussed so often by now that it is scarcely
necessary to recapitulate the plot of this complex and troubling
novel. Suffice it to say that the various penses and adventures of its
feckless protagonist, the sexual escapades in which he at times
vicariously and at times ravenously participates, his eventual
discovery of an unlikely love and compatibility-in-unfaithfulness, the
terrorist violence in which it comes to pieces, and the squalid
denouement of a largely misspent life provide us with a vivid portrait
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Babbo Cookbook
by Byron Ayanoglu
There was a time when a restaurant meal meant rare delights that we
ate when we went out for special splurges, while a home meal was based
on recipes of normal things we could easily shop for and prepare in
our humble, normal kitchens. High-end restaurant food is created from
top ingredients (to which only professionals have ready access) in
well-staffed, fully-equipped kitchens, whose sole purpose is to
astound clients and render them willing to charge big tickets on their
credit cards.
In those old days, a recipe book featuring restaurant-cooking was
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Nothing More Comforting, CanadaÆs Heritage Food
by Margaret Dragu
This slim attractive volume is a collection of thirty-three "Country
Fare" columns from Century Home Magazine written by Dorothy Duncan.
Duncan is a history and food expert with many roles in the heritage,
museum and culinary worlds. She lectures internationally on Canada's
culinary history and is a Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association.
Each of the thirty-three columns republished here celebrates an
individual ingredient or food that is a regional Canadian specialty.
These include rhubarb, potato, ginger, fiddleheads, salmon, smoked
sausage, cranberries, beets and more.
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The FoodloverÆs Atlas Of The World
by Jon Kalina
Ask anyone who knows me and they'll agree: I'm an incorrigible
know-it-all. I love to tell the story of how I won a free taxi ride in
Montreal from a Hungarian taxi driver who bet me the fare over whether
I knew the capital of Mongolia. "Ulan Bator," I said promptly. He
glowered. I glowed.
The thing is, it's hard work being a know-it-all which is why we need
books like Martha Rose Shulman's A Food Lover's Atlas of the World.
Therein lie many gems of food know-it-allism, such as the fact that
Scotland's "Auld Alliance" with France resulted in the Scots using
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: The Spice and Herb Bible-A CookÆs Guide
by Byron Ayanoglu
An Australian export, The Spice and Herb Bible is a long overdue,
essential kitchen tool for any serious home-cook. Here, finally, an
easy to navigate encyclopedia of the flavours, scents, and perfumes of
the world's cuisines, an aromatic gem of a book, as useful as it is
weighty at almost 500 pages.
The length is due to the spicy enthusiasm of its author Ian "Herbie"
Hemphill. He does not stint words as he exhaustively discusses each
one of his beloved ingredients. His menu has only 100 candidates, but
he takes 14 pages for black pepper, 10 for chilies, and 6 even for an
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Letters to a Young Chef
by Brian Fawcett
Daniel Boulud is among the marquee French chefs currently working in
the United States, the proprietor of three signature French
Restaurants in New York City and the author of three celebrity
cookbooks. Letters to A Young Chef isn't a cookbook, and it isn't
exactly the gastronomic equivalent of Rilke's famed Letters to a Young
Poet, which was a collection of real letters to a specific young poet
first published in German in 1929. In Boulud's Letters to a Young Chef
there are no letters, and no particular young chef. It's addressed,
theoretically, to anyone thinking about a career in haute cuisine, and
...
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| | Book Review A Review of: Alex Colville Return
by Olga Stein
I've always admired the art of Alex Colville. I've found myself
mesmerized by that inexplicit something' that's depicted by the
seemingly ordinary subjects of his paintings or serigraphs. Beneath
the melancholy but placid surface I sensed a perturbation so palpable,
that it-and not the subdued colours of the paintings-conditioned my
emotional response. Now with Alex Colville Return, Tom Smart
illuminates both the artist and his art, and I'm able to understand
why Colville's work had such an affect on me. According to Smart, in
order to learn something essential about Colville, it is imperative to
...
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|  | Living Tribes
by Colin Prior, Carolyn Fry
Firefly Books $35 Hardcover
ISBN: 1552977463
|
Book Review A Review of: Living Tribes
by Olga Stein
One of my favorites among this year's crop of photography books, is
"Living Tribes". With his extraordinary photos Colin Prior brings us
the face of contemporary tribal societies. I say face' because this is
what he so often brilliantly captures-a moment of pride, a wondering
expression, a shy smile, and all those other universal qualities which
render the photographed subject instantly familiar. The face may be
that of a young woman of the Himba, a tribe inhabiting the remote
region of northern Namibia, or that of a Herero girl from southern
Namibia. It may be a young man of the Kenya-Tanzania Maasai peoples,
...
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