In Geist 9 we announced the Honorary Canadian Awards so that readers could speak their minds, statistically, about Canadians and non-Canadians who have distinguished themselves in one way or the other. We invited readers to vote by mail, phone, fax and courier, and some 300 of you did.
There is something unexplained about Germaine Warkentin’s Canadian Exploration Literature: An Anthology (Oxford). This book is a collection of lengthy extracts from the written accounts of two dozen well-known explorers, starting with Pierre Radisson in the 1650s and progressing to John Palliser in the 1850s.
The current film festival season features two movies written by Geist correspondents Tom Walmsley and Peg Thompson. Walmsley’s film is called Paris, France. We can’t tell you about it first-hand, as it hasn’t come to Vancouver yet, but last week a Globe and Mail critic described it as “explicit” in a single-sentence mention.
The dysfunctional family is a familiar theme in literature these days, and Sarah Sheard’s new novel The Swing Era (Knopf) is an exception only in that it is so good. It’s the story of a young woman who returns home from abroad following her mad mother’s death, the weight of memory heavy on her shoulders; the experience reunites her with her estranged father and awakens remembrances of neglect and even self-mutilation.
The Black Cat Collective, a group of young Vancouver writers frustrated (in their own words) by “Vancouver’s lethargic literary scene,” has taken matters into its own hands with The Skinnier Leg of the Journey, a collection of short stories by Lisa Marr, Anne Jew and Rob Howatson—all collective members. And the result is surprisingly diverse, well crafted and not at all “collectivized.” These are new stories and they are good stories, ranging from a one-eyed man’s search for a mate to a wedding in Ed’s Chapel of Love.
The current film festival season features two movies written by Geist correspondents Tom Walmsley and Peg Thompson.... Peg Thompson’s movie we have seen: it’s called The Lotus-Eaters, and it’s set in the sixties on one of the Gulf Islands of BC, in the fall of the year the Beatles came to Vancouver. The central character is a twelve-year-old girl whose father is the school principal, and the central event is the arrival of a new teacher at the school.
Some of us have become suspicious of books bearing blurbs by Robin Skelton, but in the case of John Newlove’s Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992 (Porcupine’s Quill), we are pleased to make an exception. This book is as good as it gets when it comes to “selected writings.” The arrangement of the poems is not by “book period,” as we might expect, but rather by the editor’s intention that they be read as a single life’s work.
Months ago someone walked off with our review copy of that Noam Chomsky book that was on the bestseller list earlier this year: Chronicles of Dissent: Conversations with Noam Chomsky, 1984-1991 (New Star). Well, it finally came back, just in time for us to squeeze this note in and let you know there’s a good reason it got on the list: it’s a very good book, and a wonderful introduction to Chomsky’s intellectual world.
Junior reviewer Cassia Streb (grade seven) sends the following note on White Jade Tiger (Orca Books) by Julie Lawson: “White Jade Tiger is about a girl who goes back in time to 1881 when the Chinese were brought over to Victoria to build the CPR railway. There she meets a friend and they go off on the search for the white jade tiger which is an important part of Jasmine’s history.”
Major discovery of the season: Carol Windley’s first collection of short fiction, Visible Light (Oolichan). This book is really something: fully realized characters living real lives in a fully realized place.
