-
The Photographer in Search of Death
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…
-
An Evening with Birdy O’Day
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…
-
Bad Land
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…
-
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
Cole NowickiNewest Press, 2024136 pagesISBN: 9781774390900$21.95Reviewed by Daxton Comba Cole Nowicki’s Laser Quit Smoking Massage is as much a meditation on growing up Canadian in the era of digital technology as it is a journey through Nowicki’s personal life. Through a series of intimate essays, he draws the reader in with strange observations, distinctive metaphors, and personal history, all told in the eccentric voice of the man who created “The Pile.” Beginning with an essay on small-town Canada pride of place, Nowicki’s insight, dry humour, and off-the-cuff tone, is conversational and apropos for a skateboarder. Still, there is the professionalism of a newspaper columnist in the prose, which often achieves a…
-
The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf
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…
-
Unbecoming
Neil SurkanMcGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021112 pagesISBN: 9780228008910$20.00Reviewed by Emily Brandstaetter Unbecoming by Neil Surkan is a transformative, melodic, and inquisitive collection of poems devoted to investigating a world deteriorating moment by miniscule moment in shifts rarely seen by the naked eye. The book is dedicated to his son Edi — “Edi, whenever you start reading, this is for you” — and the author includes a Notes section at the back of the book to reference works featured throughout. Surkan’s imagery offers fresh takes on complex concepts as his lines dance on the page. There’s a simple elegance to his musings as in “Span,” where Surkan…. The collection is intense…
-
Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead
Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead selects poems from Catherine Graham’s works published over the last 20 years--Pupa (2003), The Red Element (2008), Winterkill (2010), Her Red Hair Rises with The Wings of Insects (2013), and The Celery Forest (2017)—and places them chronologically after new poems that open the collection for a total of six sections in the book
-
Send Me into the Woods Alone
As its title suggests, the collection’s eponymous essay is about occasionally stepping away to relieve pressure and gain perspective
-
A Meditation on Murder
Juby paints a picture of urban and sophisticated Vancouver and then switches to a ranch in the wilderness where Cartier, Helen, and the rest of the Deep Slaters navigate life without the internet.
-
Finding Edward
Finding Edward, Sheila Murray’s debut novel, explores Canadian history through the eyes of a Black man in his 20s named Cyril Rowntree who immigrates to Canada from Jamaica in 2012. Cyril works while attending university until a chance encounter with an underhoused woman named Patricia, woman the pastor calls “an unlucky penny,” changes the course of his life.
