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CanLit Canon Review #12: Harold Innis’s Empire and Communications
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. What is most remarkable about Harold Innis is his consistency through the years. Whether it’s his first book, The Fur Trade in Canada or, 20 years later, his last book, Empire and Communications, Innis is…
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Ready, set, read: CBC launches Canada Reads 2013
The CBC Broadcast Centre’s cavernous atrium was filled to capacity Thursday as fans gathered for the official launch of Canada Reads 2013. Q’s Jian Gomeshi, who hosted the day’s events, introduced this year’s five panelists, conducting short, loose interviews with each of them.
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Chasing Cures: A Review of Erin Knight’s Chaser
Reviewed in this essay: Chaser by Erin Knight, House of Anansi Press, 2012. Without experiencing the discomfits of illness, we cannot benefit from the advancement of knowledge and understanding that accompanies diagnosis and healing. Erin Knight’s second book of poems, Chaser, released last spring, explores this fascinating contradiction, as well as the pathologies that affect…
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Giant: A Witty Revolution
Reviewed in this essay: Giant by Aga Maksimowska. Pedlar Press, 2012. In 1988, Eastern Europe is on the brink of revolution. The citizens of Poland are weary from the stifling Communist management of their lives. Workers set in motion an unprecedented series of strikes that ripple across the country and ignite a slow but steady…
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CanLit Canon Review #11: W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Published in 1947, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind arrived six years after As For Me and My House, Sinclair Ross’s Prairie-based depression trigger, and it has the same message as its predecessor:…
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CanLit Canon Review #10: Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy’s debut novel, explores poverty, war, and Montreal, and it romanticizes none of them. The book centers on the 10-member Lacasse family, which is trapped by poverty in the suburban…
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CanLit Canon Review #9: Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Two Solitudes, Hugh MacLennan’s 1945 masterpiece, sets out to do nothing less than explain Quebec to the rest of Canada and harmonize the dominion for future citizens. MacLennan attempts this with a generations-spanning soap…
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The Wit and Wisdom of Misha Glouberman
Reviewed in this essay: The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti. Faber and Faber, 2011. You can tell the publishers weren’t quite sure what to do with Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti’s book The Chairs Are Where the People Go because the explanatory subtitle, “How to Live, Work, and…
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CanLit Canon Review #8: Sinclair Ross’s As For Me and My House
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. As For Me and My House, published in 1941, is a beautifully moody novel about weather and a terrible marriage. The book is written as a series of diary entries over 13 months during…
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Kim Thúy’s Ru
Reviewed in this essay: Ru by Kim Thúy. Random House, 2012 Ru by Kim Thúy is a deceptive book. It is a slim volume, but hardly a light read. What it lacks in pages it more than compensates for in breadth and complexity. This is a big story pared down. Thúy lays her narrative of…