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Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live by Ray Robertson
Reviewed in this essay: Why Not? Fifteen Reason to Live by Ray Robertson. Biblioasis, 2011. It is November in Toronto. I could use fifteen or so reasons to live right now. Ray Robertson implies a big answer with his new title. Having just completed a draft of a novel and experiencing an OCD-induced depression, Robertson…
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Charles P. Pierce’s Sports Guy
Reviewed in this essay: Sports Guy by Charles P. Pierce. Da Capo Press, 2000. The stock image of a sportswriter is of a person wearing an ugly shirt, with strong opinions on football defences and who writes recaps of games that all seem to come from the same script: who won, who lost, who scored…
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A World Elsewhere, by Wayne Johnson
Reviewed in this essay: A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnson. Knopf Canada, 2011. A tale of fathers, real and make-believe, is the backbone of Johnson`s new novel. Landish Druken is an exile at home, estranged from his father, starving in a garret, writing a book that he burns every night. On the edge of Dark…
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The Sudden Departure of Normal Life: A Review of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers
Reviewed in this essay: The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta. Random House of Canada, 2011. Four years after The Abstinence Teacher, and seven years after the massive success of Little Children, Tom Perrotta is back with The Leftovers, a novel that manages to strike just the right balance between complete absurdity and dozy normality in his…
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The Magicians and The Magician King: Review
Reviewed in this essay: The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Viking Press, 2009. The Magician King by Lev Grossman. Viking Press, 2011. Lev Grossman’s books The Magicians and The Magician King are fantasy as it ought to be: dark, funny, and brilliantly realized. The books cannot avoid comparisons to Harry Potter — geeky boy, magical school,…
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Knelman’s Hot Art: One Big Game
Stolen art—like a political sex scandal, corporate meltdown, or celebrity criminal trial—makes for a good story. Behind the thrilling headline of an $80-million Rembrandt heist, however, exists a complex network of thieves, dealers, auction houses and galleries. It is this network that Joshua Knelman traces in Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret…
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“No Family Life”: Claire Fontaine at Air de Paris
A review of Claire Fontaine’s “No Family Life,” at the Parisian gallery Air de Paris from February 11th to March 19th, 2011.
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Anna Karenina, her Android, the Aliens and the Train
A review of Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters. Quirk Books, 2010.
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You Ask Me Whether I Approve of Violence?
A review of three new documentaries, Better this World, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, and The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.
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Morals and Mean Reviews
A review of reviewing.
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Just Now Soba
A review of Soba Canada’s Soba Tuesday at Ichiriki Restaurant, 120 Bloor Street East, Toronto.