Reviews

Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen

Shannon Emmerson

In search of a more satisfying biography, I pulled out a book I received a few Christmases ago—Rosemary Sullivan's Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen. Sullivan's book made me weep during two separate readings. Intelligent and committed to asking the questions King does not—questions concerning the biographer's authority and claim to interpret a life—the book does what a biography should do. It tells MacEwen's story, it asks questions and it forces the reader to question the "facts" presented and the biographer herself. Another biography by Sullivan, on Elizabeth Smart, is equally powerful, insightful and emotionally compelling. I hope that biographers like Sullivan take up where King has left off with Margaret Laurence. Laurence, I think, deserves a closer look.

Tags
No items found.

SUGGESTIONS FOR YOU

Dispatches
Margaret Nowaczyk

Metanoias

The names we learn in childhood smell the sweetest to us

Reviews
Peggy Thompson

Beautiful and subversive books

Review of "Jo Cook and Perro Verlag Books by Artists: The Unreadable Sacred," organized by the Simon Fraser University Art Gallery.

Dispatches
ERNIE KROEGER

Acoustic Memory

Memories sneak up, tiptoe quiet as a cat. Boom like a slapshot