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Michael MirollaFictionExile Editions, 2017125 pagesISBN: 9781550966862$19.95Reviewed by Elliaz A. Luna Michael Mirolla’s collection of 10 surrealist short stories, The Photographer in Search of Death, is an absurdist journal of nightmarish proportions that begs the reader to search for truth as if rallying memory after waking from REM sleep. In Mirolla’s hands, the pen becomes a camera, becomes a mirror, where fabulist concepts meet metaphysical questions. This collection investigates how it would look and feel “if a camel were actually passing through the eye of a needle.” Despite employing various points of view, each piece blends seamlessly with the other, foreboding and melancholy. In the first story, “The Possession,” Amir and…

Greg KearneyArsenal Pulp Press, 2024336 pagesISBN: 9781551529417$24.95Reviewed by Bailey Bellosillo Greg Kearney’s An Evening with Birdy O’Day is a charming and heartbreaking meander through the queer life of Roland Keener, a 69-year-old hairdresser from Winnipeg who relates the tale of: his decades-long love for the now washed-up music icon Birdy; his partner of 25 years Tony; surviving the AIDS epidemic; and his relationship with his mother. She is queer, poor, and single and his role model despite the fact that she doesn’t hesitate to remind him he is fat and a product of rape. After being estranged for decades, Roland receives VIP tickets to Birdy’s comeback concert in Winnipeg. The…

Corrina ChongArsenal Pulp, 2024248 pagesISBN: 9781551529592$24.95Reviewed by Ali Dillon-Cardinal   “Layers of sediment covers the bones, burying them deeper and deeper over time.”   Corrina Chong tells a slow-burning story about repression, guilt, and grief, unfurling an eerie family road trip that will make you question the lengths to which one should go for a family who keeps everything from you.  Chong introduces her story with a strong but poetic voice that builds tension from cover to cover. Regina is a realistic, relatable, and disarmingly hopeful narrator who subverts expectations. She is a large woman, often invisible to the world, who lives a loner’s life of peace and quiet in…

Timothy TaylorFictionDundurn Press, 2024352 pagesISBN: 9781459753198$26.99Reviewed by Alexandra Groenwoldt “How many chefs would be driven to a violent fury on learning they’d just prepped a $30 plate for a Brittany spaniel?” Timothy Taylor presents the world of high-end restaurants and culinary excellence, one in which misogyny, cultural appropriation, and substance abuse figure prominently. Through the course of the novel, Taylor takes the reader from Paris to Vancouver to Tokyo, providing a vivid and delicious account of each setting. The first-person narrator, Matthew (Teo) Wolf, starts out as an apprentice at the Parisian high-end restaurant, Le Dauphin. Young and green, he works his way up alongside the charismatic and flamboyant sous…