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REVIEWS
Book Review: The Truth About Canada
As implied by the tabloid-style title, Mel Hurtig’s latest book is necessary reading, particularly for journalists, editorial writers, politicians, and CEOs. For all Canadians it provides a mass of data and sources to evaluate the misleading and often downrigh...
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The Valley, by Gayle Friesen: A review
The Valley, by Gayle Friesen is a pleasant summer read. It seems odd to write that as I think about the subjects and themes covered in the book: strained relationships, religious intolerance, debilitating migraines, suicidal thoughts, and a multitude of Biblic...
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All Souls: Astra's World
An Elemental Response to All Souls
This is my first ever formal book review and as such I revert to the elemental tools of every writer, the alphabet. I use an “ABC” rubric to provide a frame of reference for consideration of my response to the book.
T...
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Five books about Anne of Green Gables and Lucy Maud Montgomery
Early in her career, soon after the publication of Anne of Green Gables and the novels that rapidly followed it, L. M. Montgomery became a famous Canadian writer. Governors General and British peers arrived in Prince Edward Island, intent on meeting her. By th...
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Who Owns Canada Now: Canada's mega-rich
This book is primarily about the richest 75 billionaires in Canada but ends with a discussion of what the situation is currently and what the future holds – for wealthy families and for Canada – with Ms Francis’ policy recommendations to make Canada more entre...
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Wicked Woods: Is New Brunswick haunted?
Who isn’t scared walking alone in the deep woods? We tell ghost stories around the campfire in an attempt to make some sense of our fear and horror of the unknown.
Steve Vernon’s collection of ghost stories from New Brunswick includes spellbinding tales of ...
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A code to crack from Pulitzer winner Brooks
I should start by saying that this is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. I will also risk losing the reader entirely by saying that this book reminds me of The Da Vinci Code.
If you’re still with me, I can elaborate. People of the Book is in m...
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The Queen has a slight cold
It was the dogs’ fault
Alan Bennett is an award winning writer and actor perhaps best known for having been a member of the legendary comedy group Beyond the Fringe, and for his play and screenplay The Madness of George III. His latest work, although a nov...
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Cause(way) and Effect
Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, by Linden MacIntyre is part history, part nostalgia and part coming of age. This non-fiction work chronicles the construction of the Canso Causeway that joined Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia. MacIntyre employs th...
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Halifax lawyer Anne Emery chases mystery with prose
The seedy underbelly of contemporary Halifax comes to life in this trio of suspense thrillers by local author Anne Emery. Protagonist Monty Collins is a Halifax lawyer and amateur blues musician whose personal life is as complex as the mysteries he unravels.
...
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Katherine Barber: Facts about the Language from Canada’s Word Lady
Six Words you Never Knew had Something to With Pigs and Only in Canada, You Say are two small books by Katherine Barber, the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. She may be better known as “Canada’s Word Lady” and is a frequent guest on both CBC ...
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Jack Kerouac: 50 Years Of The Beat Generation
50 years after the rave review in The New York Times that officially launched his literary career, Jack Kerouac seems to be everywhere. It was September 5th, 1957, that Gilbert Millstein announced that On The Road (The Viking Press) was as important to the eme...
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Paul Auster: The Brooklyn Follies
New York City writer Paul Auster’s latest novel, The Brooklyn Follies, is a curious entry into his already heady body of work.
Known as one of the most forceful - but surprisingly playful - of post-modern American authors, Auster explores absurdity in his w...
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Cornell Woolrich Returns With Fright
The Hard Case Crime paperback imprint has uncovered another long-lost pulp fiction masterpiece. This time out it’s Cornell Woolrich’s 1950 murder mystery Fright, first published under the pseudonym George Hopley (one of Woolrich’s other favourite nom-de-plumes...
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Book Vs Film: Gods And Monsters
Christopher Bram’s 1996 novel Father Of Frankenstein became Bill Condon’s Academy Award-winning feature film Gods And Monsters. With a paperback version of the novel - renamed to match the movie - now hitting the remainder bins, fans of filmic adaptations have...
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Fine Lines: Clothesline Culture
Fine Lines: A Celebration of Clothesline Culture is an exhaustive study of the habits and obsessions of clothesline devotees. Cindy Etter-Turnbull (a.k.a. Mrs. Clothesline) shows how, for many people, the clothesline is not just a place to dry clothes, but a r...
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Feast and Famine in the Vagrant Revue
In her Coda to The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, editor Sandra McIntyre stresses the importance of the reader’s freedom to roam within an anthology. The Revue is a collection of short stories written by emerging writers from Atlantic Canada, and McIntyre puts ...
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White Bicycles: The '60s In A Broken Mirror
Legendary producer Joe Boyd took an awful long time to get around to writing about his experiences in the 1960s music business recording the likes of Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. The wait has been wo...
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Frank Ledwell's Story Brook
Frank Ledwell is now in his third year as P.E.I’s second Poet Laureate. It’s no surprise that The Taste of Water starts and ends at home in P.E.I., but Ledwell varies his discussion of home considerably, moving from sketches of local personalities to discussio...
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David Goodis Resurfaces in Soft Cover
David Goodis is one of the most intriguing of all serie noire writers. Best known for providing the source material for a string of fascinating movies - Truffaut’s early 1960s French New Wave masterpiece Shoot the Piano Player, the 1948 Bogart/Bacall vehicle ...
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Samuel Fuller's 'A Third Face'
There are only a handful of truly great memoirs in the cinema. Chaplin’s My Autobiography is one, going from the Dickensian misery of London’s Poor Houses to the status of an international icon. Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Lantern is another, full of vivid reme...
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Better Than Blonde
If you felt tortured by the popularity and all-around superiority of a clique of giggling Blondes in High school, you might not recognize the light-headed leaders of Teresa Toten’s Me and the Blondes. For starters, the Blondes are nice. And smart. And, we are ...
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Donovan's Memoir Brings Back '60s
Once considered the flakiest of ‘60s singer/songwriters, British musician Donovan - perhaps the first to be known by a single name only along with Cher and Melanie - has again followed in Bob Dylan’s footsteps by releasing a vivid volume of memoirs.
The Aut...
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Lockpick Pornography Opens Doors
Joey Comeau’s internet novel Lockpick Pornography is a genuine hit.
The Halifax author, still in his 20s, put up the first seven chapters of the book online for free. If you want to find out what happens in the end, you can purchase the final few chapters f...
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In Search of Risk: Author Michael Ungar
It’s very cold and blustery outside the night Michael Ungar is scheduled to speak at Fairview Junior High School in Halifax. Despite the weather, a group of attentive parents has gathered inside the school library to hear Ungar address the topic of his latest ...
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Daniel MacIvor's Governor General Winning Book Is A Hard Slog
There’s no question that Cape Bretoner Daniel MacIvor is considered to be one of Canada’s most important theatre artists. The fact that he recently won a Governor General’s Award for his five-play collection entitled I Still Love You pretty well confirm’s the ...
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Canada's New Yorkers
It’s more than a little dangerous, especially among Can Lit scholars, to suggest that Canadian Literature was started in the U.S. Yet that is exactly what Nick Mount does in his provocative study When Canadian Literature Moved to New York.
While many may i...
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A Writer's Remorse: Alice Munro's The View From Castle Rock
Alice Munro has been dealing with writer’s remorse throughout her career. Not that she’s overcome with remorse—on the surface it’s just the opposite. She is playful and ironic, and most of the stories in The View From Castle Rock are about playing with and eve...
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Elizabeth Bachinsky's Home of Sudden Service
The cover blurb of Home of Sudden Service calls attention to the gritty and startling side of Elizabeth Bachinsky’s poems, labelling her work “Valley Gothic” made of “punk rock villanelles and delinquent sonnets.” These descriptions make great cover copy, but ...
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White Man's Cotten good grist for a movie
White Man’s Cotton represents an interesting attempt by Newfoundland’s Jesperson Publishing to broaden its range into the world of contemporary, edgy thrillers.
The first novel by St. John’s bureaucrat and union rep Randy W. Somerton, the book begins with a...
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Book vs Film: Book Wins
Filmmaker Todd Field’s follow-up to his acclaimed literary adaptation In The Bedroom is an even more ambitious adult drama. This time he’s tackled American satirical novelist Tom Perotta’s 2001 suburban angst 'n-adultery book, Little Children. Perotta is best ...
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The Hovels and Hospitality of Nova Scotia
There is no enthusiasm for Nova Scotia like that of visiting friends and family from outside the province. They are amazed by the untamed, undeveloped land between the airport and Halifax, they love the short drives to the beaches and the variety of beautiful ...
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Lost crime novel surfaces by author of To Catch a Thief
Canadians might be forgiven if they think the only David Dodge worth thinking about is the current head of this country’s Federal Bank.
There's another David Dodge of note, and his name has resurfaced lately, even though he passed away in 1974 after a long,...
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Before The Cameras
Seeing Maritimes CTV News anchor Steve Murphy on the cover of both The Coast and Frank magazines last month was unnecessary, to say the least.
The guy’s on TV every night for the three province’s most authoritative newscast, for gosh sakes. Couldn’t we see ...
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Johnny Kellock Died Today
Hadley Dyer’s Johnny Kellock Died Today is set in the historic North End of Halifax in the Summer of 1959, and it is a thoroughly original story, at turns funny and dark. Halifax readers, in particular, will appreciate the vivid sketches of the city’s landmark...
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Elaine McCluskey's fascinating but frustrating book The Watermelon Social
Elaine McCluskey’s debut collection of short stories published by Gaspereau Press presents readers with a unique problem: McCluskey is a terrific writer whose stories are terrible.
How is her writing so good? It’s vivid, poetic stuff, as if the contents of ...
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A Definitive Look At Lightkeeping
Chris Mills’ Lighthouse Legacies (Nimbus Publishing) is about as definitive as a book can get on the subject of Nova Scotia’s lighthouses.
Combining extensive oral histories with his own track record in the Coastal Service - on both the East Coast and in Br...
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The Island Of The Seven Cities
Yale-educated architect and teacher Paul Chiasson’s book, The Island Of The Seven Cities, is one of those rare tomes that could change the way we think about how North America was peopled.
His central thesis, that a massive Chinese City existed in Cape Bret...
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Beat Generation Icon's New Book Of Poetry
Beat Generation avatar Jack Kerouac’s estate continues to pour forth a steady stream of astonishing, previously unpublished material. Although the iconic author died in October 1969, he’s been more prolific lately than when he was alive.
In the last year al...
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Leonard Cohen Returns To Poetry
Leonard Cohen’s first book of new poetry in 22 years was released by his longtime publisher McLelland & Stewart on April 24th, 2006.
Book Of Longing, a 229-page collection of verse, drawings and a few longer prose pieces -- just happens to be Cohen’s best ...
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Noir Revival
Had all the Hammett you can handle? Reduced to reading Raymond Chandler’s letters? Tired of looking for hard-to-find used paperbacks of Cornell Woolrich’s I Married A Dead Man and W.R. Burnett’s The Ashpalt Jungle?
Then the new Hard Case Crime Series might ...
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