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CanLit Canon Review #2: Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that have shaped this country. From its very first sentence, which is 148 words long and covers, in part, the evolution of a local stream, Anne of Green Gables is a charming novel, but in an excruciatingly bland…
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Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian Literature
Reviewed in this essay: Lectures on Russian Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. At Wellesley College in 1941, before he secured financial independence with Lolita (1955), Nabokov was a one-man Russian literature department. Lectures on Russian Literature collects his lessons on Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Gorki and Dostoevsky from that period, including after he…
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“Hatred Warms the Heart”: Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery: A Novel
Reviewed in this essay: The Prague Cemetery: A Novel by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery is a novel about hatred, and about why people love to believe conspiracy theories, which confirm their worst fears about groups they fear or resent. “In some…
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Tattooing The Heart Of Darkness: a Review of Prick: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist
Reviewed in this essay: Prick: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist, by Ashley Little. Tightrope Books, 2011. Though no babe in the woods himself, when Anthony Ant Young, the redheaded protagonist in Ashley Little’s brief debut novel Prick: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist initially enters a Victoria tattoo parlour seeking an apprenticeship, his questionable virtue is unblemished…
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Fashion Designers At The Opera
Reviewed in this essay: Fashion Designers at the Opera, by Helena Matheopoulos. Thames & Hudson, 2011. Season after season both fashion designers and opera producers have to contend with the fact that their work will be hotly debated by the masses. Much of the scrutiny they receive comes from that greyest of all grey…
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CanLit Canon Review #1: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that have shaped this country. Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush is a memoir, written as an attempt to enlighten her people back home in the motherland to the terrible weather and accommodations in British North America.…
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William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Grey Mass Hung Over a Chunk of Canadian History
Reviewed in this essay: King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny by Allan Levine. D&M Publishers Inc., 2011. William Lyon Mackenzie King exists only dimly in our collective consciousness, as a kind of great grey mass hung over a rather substantial chunk of political history. Refreshingly, Allan Levine’s new…
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“Sally Forth, Comrades!”: Jesus Chrysler Drives Full Force into Toronto’s Progressive Theatre Scene
Reviewed in this essay: Jesus Chrysler, at Theatre Pass Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave., Toronto. Runs until Dec. 11th, 2011. “Sally forth, comrades!” – with these three words you are likely to be ushered into Theatre Pass Muraille’s intimate backspace by a friendly-faced, trouser-clad woman named Jim. You’ll shuffle to your seat while she bickers with…
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The Ghosts of Europe: Q & A with Anna Porter
As part of its Eh List Author Series, The Barbara Frum Library welcomed acclaimed author Anna Porter on November 17 to discuss her latest book, The Ghosts of Europe (Douglas & McIntyre, 2010). Marking twenty years since Central Europe wrenched itself free of its various Communist dictatorships, The Ghosts of Europe is a sobering glimpse…
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Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows
Reviewed in this essay: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. Google. Huffington. Sports scores. Twitter. Text. Blog, blog, blog. Twitt—PHONE CALL!—Email. Facebook. Twitter . . . Does this read like the score of activities that occupy just two minutes of your day? In his Pulitzer-nominated book, The Shallows: What…
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Rothko on a Canadian Stage: a Review of Red
Reviewed in this essay: Red, at the Bluma Appel Theatre at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto. Runs until Dec. 17. Canadian Stage’s audience has been the topic of many news stories since Matthew Joceyln took over as Artistic Director two years ago. Jocelyn, a Canadian director who has…
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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…