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On Goldstein’s Novels of Ideas: Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince
This piece continues a series of reviews highlighting philosopher-novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s list of the best “novels of ideas”. Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince was the fourth entry on her list. Reviewed in this essay: The Black Prince, Iris Murdoch. Penguin Classics, 2003 (Originally published: 1973) The Black Prince is the story of Bradley Pearson,…
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TRB Podcast: Carolina Cambre on Che Guevara’s Image in East Timor
Listen here: [audio:May2012/cambre.mp3] On February 25, Dr. Carolina Cambre was invited to speak at the Toronto Semiotic Circle as part of their monthly lecture series. Her lecture, titled “The Semiotics of Artifice in the Case of Che Guevara’s Face in East Timor,” explores the appropriation of the famous South American revolutionary for use in the…
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June 20: The TRB’s Occupy Issue Launch Party Masquerade
Dear Readers, To round out our first year of publishing quarterly issues of thoughtful, playful, and provoking essays and poetry, we bring you a themed issue: we’re thrilled to announce the June 20th launch of The Toronto Review of Books Issue Four: the Occupy Issue. WHAT: Occupy Issue Launch Party Masquerade! WHEN: June 20th, 8pm until late WHERE: Poetry…
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The Royal Visit to Ashbridges Bay
As I see it, fair reader, you likely find royal tours either (1) unambiguously thrilling; (2) dull as dishwater; (3) dull as dishwater and thus quite enjoyable. I fall into the third category, which is why I happily agreed to live-tweet Charles and Camilla’s visit to Ashbridges Bay for the Victoria Day fireworks. Here is…
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Kaleidoscope: A Q & A with Gail Bowen
In Kaleidoscope, the thirteenth book in Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn mystery series, released last month, Joanne retires. Happily settled with her husband Zack Shreve and their 14 year-old-daughter Taylor, and at last liberated to take daytime naps, her prospects for a cozy retirement are good. But the trials of her neighbours, blistering unhappily in situations…
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The World Absurd
Reviewed in this essay: Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened by Hal Niedzviecki. City Lights Books, 2011. Hal Niedzviecki’s Look Down, This Is Where It Must Have Happened, will perturb you if you like to think the world is mostly a predictable place if you play your cards right. In each of…
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Bookishness: Week of May 21, 2012
“The Daniel Day-Lewis of the method prank” On How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening, for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, and Civil Servants, with Illustrations Showing Current Practice “Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Punk-Super-Party-Band” plays exclusive Air Canada show This made me smile so hard. Yay, for sure. Expand your vocabulary (beyond…
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“Funny Strange”: TRB Tweets Calvin Trillin, Seán Cullen, and Charles Foran on Mordecai Richler
Last night we had a marvellous time live-tweeting “Funny Strange: Satire after Mordecai Richler,” PEN Canada‘s event at the Royal Ontario Museum. PEN Canada President and Richler biographer Charles Foran moderated a chat between the renowned New Yorker author Calvin Trillin and comedian Seán Cullen. Tweets as follows: [View the story “The Toronto Review of Books…
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TRB Podcast: Peta-Gaye Nash kicks off Jamaica 50 at TPL
Listen here: [audio:May2012/nash.mp3] Peta-Gaye Nash started the Jamaica 50 series at the Toronto Public Library with readings from her short story collection, I Too Hear the Drums. She is a short-story and children’s book author born and raised in Jamaica; she now lives in Mississauga. In this podcast, recorded at the Maria A. Shchuka library branch…
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The Literary Revolution That Gave Birth to a Social Revolution
Reviewed in this essay: Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America by Christopher Bram. Twelve Books, 2012. Way before popular television shows like Will & Grace and Queer as Folk, there were a handful of gay American writers who introduced gay lives to mainstream America. Gay novelists, poets and playwrights of the 1940s and…
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Keys to The Gift: Yuri Leving’s Guide to Nabokov
Reviewed in this essay: Keys to The Gift: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel, by Yuri Leving. Academic Studies Press, 2011. I was a student in Yuri Leving’s Survey of Russian Literature class at Dalhousie University in 2007. He got me hooked on Nabokov, so I was excited when Leving’s new book on a major…
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A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez
Reviewed in this essay: A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez. Algonquin Books, 2012. Throughout her travels into Haiti and Port-au-Prince, novelist and memoirist Julia Alvarez is haunted by the question, “Once we see a thing, what then is our obligation?” She sets out to answer the question in her new memoir, A Wedding in…