André AlexisCoach House Books, 2019224 pages9781552453797$19.95 Days by Moonlight follows botanist Alfred “Alfie” Homer as driver and research assistant to his parent’s friend Professor Bruno, a biographer searching for the mysterious poet John Skennen. The publisher’s website describes it as “Gulliver’s Travels meets The Underground Railroad: a road trip through the countryside – and the psyche.” Alfie is ever hopeful and constantly surprised as they encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language or that hold Indigenous Parades; it is a land of werewolves and witches.  Days by Moonlight is a Dantesque journey taken when the sun is setting and makes us question what is real. As Alfie and Bruno…

Christina MyersCaitlin Press, 2021215 pagesISBN-13: 978-1-773860596$22.95 Reviewed by Tammi Carto Ruthie is 38 years old when she catches her boyfriend having sex on their couch with “Flower Shop Girl.” On Valentine’s day, no less. Cue the downward spiral. Ruthie lands single and unemployed on her best friend Jules’ couch. She sinks into a darkness fuelled by anger and betrayal until one day Jules forces her to answer an ad placed by the son of an elderly woman looking for someone to drive his mother from PEI to his house in BC. Ruthie considers loosening her grip on the wine bottle and abandoning her pajamas and lumpy couch, but protests. “I…

Sydney Warner BroomanInvisible Publishing, 2021128 PagesISBN 978-1-988784-79-3$20.95 Reviewed by Chris (Seabacola) Beaton The Pump is an unnerving linked story collection that is a tour of its titular town in crisis: beavers are eating people and there’s something in the water warping people’s bodies, minds, and souls. Nature is the root of this disaster, but is it truly to blame? A trigger warning feels appropriate for this book as its morbid tales can make one feel both uncomfortable and weak at the knees. The Pump is full of secrets and lore, unraveling as each story spirals further into despair. The idea of being trapped is a common theme, whether it’s on…

S. Montana KatzGuernica Editions, 2020236 pagesISBN: 1771835508$20.00 Side Effects: A Footloose Journey to the Apocalypse is a rollercoaster read through the Baby Boomer years, 60-80s, exploring the devil-may-care attitudes of a peculiarly quirky family. The narrator is the first-born daughter of that family, who offers a retrospective of past events. The book captures a post-war optimism as a newly married couple from New York set out to travel the country by motorcycle for their honeymoon. When they reach California, they are seduced by the warm climate and intellectual counter-culture and vow to live there one day as political activists. A year later they have their first child and Side Effects is told…

Alex PasseyAt Bay PressSeptember 29, 2020347 pagesISBN: 9781988168234$29.95 Mirror’s Edge is a cunning and thought-provoking debut science fiction/fantasy novel that showcases two beautifully juxtaposed worlds. It follows Rath in a technologically advanced future in which everyone and everything is connected through a MOSES chip nestled against the brainstem. Except, Rath hates his MOSES chip. He could have it removed, but doing so would make it impossible for him to function as a part of his society. Sarah’s world is beautiful and pristine, nature nearly untouched by the humans that live in a simpler world. Sarah lives in a small cabin in the woods with a large garden, a tool shed,…

Kristyn DunnionBiblioasis, 2020299 pagesISBN 9781771963862$18.95 (ebook)Reviewed by Danielle Minnis Stoop City collects 13 wistful vignettes about the lives of some of the most unfortunate, vulnerable, and abused people in modern-day Toronto. There, people of every age, ethnicity, sexual identity, and socioeconomic status, struggle to cope. In the introductory story, “Now Is the Time to Light Fires” an unnamed narrator mourns the death of her girlfriend, Marzana, only to be informed of her infidelity when her ghost starts haunting their condo. “Fits Ritual” follows a homeless youth struggling with addiction, as he grows increasingly more concerned when his friend and partner, Roam, does not return from their latest scam. “Tracker &…

John Elizabeth StintziArsenal Pulp Press, 2020320 pagesISBN: 9781551528014$19.95Reviewed by Miles Hayes In Vanishing Monuments, the debut novel by John Elizabeth Stintzi, time and memory intersect in poignant and devastating ways. Alani Baumb, a non-binary photographer living in Minneapolis, gets a call from a care home saying that their mother, who had been living with dementia in a nursing home in Winnipeg for years, has completely lost the ability to speak. Alani travels back to Canada to see their mother, staying in their unoccupied childhood home for the first time since running away as a teenager. Their mother’s declining health and aphasia adds urgency to their need for closure: “If it’s…

Saleema NawazMclelland & Stewart, 2020428 pagesISBN: 978-0-7710-7257-4$24.95Reviewed by Giovani Ralaisa Saleema Nawaz’s bestseller Songs for the End of the World presents a world that mirrors our own, complete with a pandemic, self-isolation, reliance on the Web, and the power of human connection. Nawaz wrote this book from 2013 to 2019 after researching SARS and the Spanish Flu. She created ARAMIS, Acute Respiratory and Muscular Inflammatory Syndrome reminiscent of our own COVID-19, and let it flood her fictional world like “a maelstrom: intense, unseemly.” ARAMIS takes hold late July and spreads between August and December. Elliot is a first responder in New York who realizes he contracted it at a restaurant…

Joseph A. DandurandGuernica Editions, 2020127 pagesISBN: 978-1-77183-506-0$20.00Reviewed by Kashmir Lesnick-Petrovicz “Over time you begin to understand/who you are and why you are here” (111) I Will Be Corrupted is a fictional tale of a Kwantlen man living on Vancouver’s downtown east side who is both healer and heroin addict. Dandurand’s collection explores the painful battle of a life defined by addiction and mental health struggles, love and loss, trauma and Indigenous tradition, and forgiveness and eventual redemption. I Will Be Corrupted includes 57 relatable, raw, and heart-wrenchingly honest poems that play with fragments, unusual structure, and illusions so that each page is a new day unknown until we live it.…

Madeline SonikAnvil Press Publishers Inc, 2020194 pagesISBN: 978-1-77214-148-1$20.00 Reviewed by Isaac Maschek Madeline Sonik sets her misanthropic and heartbreaking short story collection in the fictional Ontario city of Fontainebleau, along the Detroit river. Each story follows a citizen of the city through traumas relived and repressed, from idealistic cops to heartbroken vandals. Sonik makes it easy to sympathize with even the most troubled individuals, and weep for the good-hearted souls trapped by Fontainebleau’s pull. Fontainebleau presents an immoral world where every human is a monster and every monster is humanized. The world Sonik describes is dark and grim,and plays with perspective, unreliable narrators, and characters that cross over between stories,…