-
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…
-
CanLit Canon Review #7: Morley Callaghan’s Such Is My Beloved
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Morley Callaghan’s fourth novel, Such Is My Beloved, was published in 1934, and it’s the first of the books in the canon that feels modern. There’s a Chinese restaurant, a completely un-CanLit lack of…
-
CanLit Canon Review #5: Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. No one talks about Mazo de la Roche anymore, but her 16-part series, which chronicled the doings of the Whiteoak family, was popular in its time. So popular, in fact, that a neighbourhood and…
-
Kate Beaton: Canada’s Cartoonist
Reviewed in this essay: Hark, a Vagrant, by Kate Beaton. Drawn and Quarterly, 2011. On the web at harkavagrant.com. If you haven’t heard of Kate Beaton until lately you’re a little late to the party. Since Drawn and Quarterly released a collection of her work last fall, the cartoonist has exploded in popularity: a book…
-
Canada Reads
Ready, Set, Read! Canadians have until February 6-9, 2012, to work their way through five riveting true-to-life tales that begin with the sound of a pleading political prisoner in a Tehran jail, transform into a revolutionary shout of protest against Pinochet’s rule in Chile, crescendo into the scream of a thousand hockey fans, simmer down to…