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MY CONVERSATIONS WITH CANADIANS
My Conversations with Canadians is a collection of non-fiction essays by novelist Lee Maracle examining coloniztion and its effects on Canada’s First Nations, counterbalancing colonial myths and exposing cultural stereotypes perpetuated by media. It also discusses, globalization, global warming, exploitation of First Nations cultures and natural resources by multinational companies dominating industries where First Nations people are often under- or unemployed, and the differences between First Nations and European worldviews.
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MOWING
An apple tree grown from seed can take up to 10 years to bear fruit and Marlene Cookshaw’s fifth book of poetry, Mowing, has likewise germinated for over a decade. Now she is harvesting the fruits of her literary labour and it is sweet.
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LITTLE BEAST
“You’re not a monster,” Mother used to say. “Just a little beast.” In the original French, the title for Little Beast was Barbe: Roman. “Barbe” means “beard” in French. Both of these titles ring true when looking at the story as a whole.
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JUST LET ME LOOK AT YOU
Bill Gaston, best known for his fiction, writes a transparent and eloquent memoir about the life he shared with his father.
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THE INFLATABLE LIFE
Mark Laba’s Inflatable Life is a collection of 35 poems pondering everything from Edgar Allan Poe to skeet shooting to TV variety shows he watched as a child, most now forgotten in the vault of broadcast history. Consequently, The Inflatable Life, features singing, dancing, drama, comedy, and commentary on gritty pulp fiction, “Borscht Belt” humour, ventriloquism, and comic books, so that the poems collectively present a kind of Jewish vaudeville both surreal and lyrical.
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DEEP RIVER NIGHT
“The dark cup of the cat’s ear moved, the long guard hairs at the tip shivering toward the crack in the window beside her. Art finished his drink, put his glass down by the whiskey bottle, and waited to see if the cat’s ear would come back to rest, but it didn’t. Instead, she lifted her head and looked out the window, both ears pointed at whatever was outside.”
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COLD SKIES
Cold Skies by Thomas King is the third in the Thumps DreadfulWater series, featuring a retired Cherokee LAPD detective with a keen interest in photography who is unwillingly pulled back into the force to replace Sheriff Duke Hockney in his hometown of Chinook, Montana. Hockney hands the reigns to DreadfulWater when he is ordered to go to Costa Rica, a questionable choice that casts a shadow over the whole book given that it is the FBI’s responsibility to investigate murders that occur on U.S. reservations
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COBRA CLUTCH
Cobra Clutch features Jed, a retired wrestler, who returns to his previous life, a raw and gritty world relieved by comedy from his ex-military cousin, Decalin. Decalin not only has the “ability to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. But he is damn near legendary for his tendency to pick a fight after downing one too many of his masterful creations.”
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GREENWOOD
“Wood is time captured. A map. A cellular memory. A record.” Spanning 138 years, Greenwood is structured like the cross-section of a tree, the rings of which physically record time passing, and is reflected visually in the novel’s Table of Contents. The oldest events occur in 1908, nestled in the middle rings, and the near future events of 2038 hover on the outer rings.
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EVERYTHING IS AWFUL AND YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON
Daniel Zomparelli’s Everything is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person is a collection of short stories forefronting human connection: from obsession with strangers’ passing comments to online dating, to conversations with the dead. Most stories are focused on the romance – or the lack thereof – that arises from digital communication within the gay community. As readers, we are transported from mind to mind, body to body, with a group of men. Each perspective is different, but they are fundamentally connected in that that they appear in each other’s lives as they do in small and intertwined gay communities.