Forever is a Dutch film made by the experienced documentarian Heddy Honigmann. Its subject is Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris but its scope includes life and death, history and memory, art and beauty.
Shannon Emmerson
jacks: a gothic gospel
In the note accompanying Geist's copy of jacks: a gothic gospel (Livres DC Books), the book's author Anne Stone recommends it for review, or for "hanging out on a coffee table as an orange object." And, although it is a lovely orange object, jacks is
Patty Osborne
Jeannie and the Gentle Giants
In Jeannie and the Gentle Giants by Luanne Armstrong (Ronsdale), Jeannie is a young city girl who ends up in a foster home in the countryside near Kelowna, B.C., and the gentle giants are two enormous work horses named Sally and Sebastien who help Je
Carrie Villeneuve
Jesus Christ: The Lost Years
The two actors shared the portrayal of Jesus as well as playing the other characters, including Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, Elvis and the three wise men—with a versatility and energy that contributed to a unique and very funny show.
Mandelbrot
Jeff Wall: The Complete Edition
Mandelbrot reviews Jeff Wall: The Complete Edition (Phaidon).
Carra Noelle Simpson
Josh Ritter
On February 22, 2007, the folk singer-songwriter Josh Ritter stepped on stage at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, played three songs and said little more than “I’m excited to be here.” Uh-oh, I thought. After a few songs he absorbed the warm glow
Patricia Holmes
Karenin Sings the Blues
Many of the poems in Sharon McCartney’s second book, Karenin Sings the Blues, have won national competitions and been published in literary magazines, and so set the standard and tone for the rest of this fine collection. The book is presented in thr
Michael Hayward
Just Kids
Long before Patti Smith became “the Godmother of Punk” she was a not- atypical teenager of the 1960s, living with her parents in suburban New Jersey.
Patty Osborne
Justa
Justa by Bridget Moran is another great book—this time I'm typesetting it, and I almost never read books that I typeset But I found myself reading sections while waiting for other sections to print, and I could tell it was going to be a good one. Jus
Eve Corbel
Kafka
Mairowitz and Crumb’s Kafka, meanwhile, opens with a horrifying drawing of one of Franz K’s many grisly fantasies of his own death—a pork butcher’s cleaver hacking off neat slices from his head.
Stephen Osborne
Karla's Web: A Cultural Investigation of the Mahaffy-French Murders
Thematic convergence was far from my mind when Frank Davey's nearly-instant book, Karla's Web: A Cultural Investigation of the Mahaffy-French Murders (Viking), appeared in the office. For one thing, it came in a wrapper announcing it to be a copy of
Stephen Osborne
Karl Marx
The new Karl Marx biography by Francis Wheen (4th Estate) fails to illuminate a man who was loved by his family and revered by his followers; instead we are given a hazy sketch of a petulant, perhaps incompetent man of few skills and little disciplin
Stephen Osborne
Killshot
In the local secondhand a few weeks ago, a copy of Killshot by Elmore Leonard, and this sentence on the first page: It was time to get away from here, leave Toronto and the Waverly Hotel for good and he wouldn't drink so much and be sick in the morni
Eve Corbel
King
The first volume of King, a "comic book" biography of Martin Luther King (Fantagraphic Books), will not be misinterpreted or appropriated by neo-Nazis. Yet its power is delivered with grace and subtlety.
Michael Hayward
Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Songs and Stories
What better song for summer’s soundtrack than Kate and Anna’s “Swimming Song”? I added it to my iPod rotation while reading Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Songs and Stories (Penumbra), too much of which consists of transcribed newspaper reviews of albums
Kris Rothstein
King of the Lost & Found
Raymond J. Dunne, the sixteen-year-old hero of John Lekich’s teen novel, King of the Lost & Found (Raincoast), is an outsider.
Peggy Thompson
Kipper's Game
P.D. James meets Philip K. Dick in Barbara Ehrenreich's first novel, Kipper's Game, a complex mystery story set in an all-too-believable world of strange new diseases, genetic mutations and virtual reality.
Geist Staff
Kitchen
Grove Press has just brought out an English translation of Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto, an unclassifiable, magnificent little book that has won two literary awards and has had fifty-seven—yes, fifty-seven—printings in four years. As the dust jacket
Patty Osborne
Knit Lit
Sheila was reading Knit Lit, an anthology of stories about knitting edited by Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf (Three Rivers Press) and some of them were making her laugh out loud, especially the one about an oversized synthetic orange sweater that acqui
Michael Hayward
La Haine
Mathieu Kassovitz was just twenty-eight years old when he made La Haine (Criterion dvd), a 1995 film released in black and white and set in les banlieues, the racially volatile suburbs that surround Paris like an explosive vest.
Mandelbrot
La Florida
Are the Québecois the only moviemakers in North America with a sense of humour? Latest evidence to hand would certainly suggest so: three movies in the local video place this season and all winners.
Michael Hayward
La Commune
Remember those student days when, in preparation for your final exam, you’d optimistically sit through a movie version as a substitute for the book itself?
Michael Hayward
Lancelot of the Lake
In one of the audio tracks on the dvd of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, co-director Terry Gilliam credits Robert Bresson’s 1974 film Lancelot of the Lake (New Yorker Films dvd) as an inadvertent inspiration for Grail.
Sam Macklin
Krazy & Ignatz 1937
The recent Krazy & Ignatz 1937–1938: Shifting Sands Dusts Its Cheeks in Powdered Beauty is one of the most agreeably bonkers tomes published in recent memory. Just about every strip tells the story of Ignatz Mouse’s compulsion to hurl bricks at the w
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Sarah Leavitt
Small Dogs
Emily’s mother had unusually large eyes that bulged slightly and often turned red, and she stared at people in restaurants and stores. Sometimes Emily’s mother commented on these people’s conversations, or laughed at their jokes, as if she were part
Ola Szczecinska
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
Michal Kozlowski reviews Andy Brown's debut novel The Mole Chronicles, which charts a sibling relationship involving moles, comic books, swimming pools, kidnapping, culture jamming and more.
Patty Osborne
Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers
Patty Osborne reviews Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers by Rebecca Stefoff, a book—complete with maps, drawings and photographs—that describes the travels of nine women.
Stephen Osborne
Shoot!
Despite high hopes, Stephen Osborne calls Shoot! by George Bowering his biggest disappointment.
Luanne Armstrong
Simple Recipes
Luanne Armstrong reviews "three of the better books of short stories to come out in 2001"—Kingdom of Monkeys, Simple Recipes and Sputnik Diner.
Michał Kozłowski
Stickboy: A Novel in Verse
In Stickboy, Shane Koyczan asks: what happens when the bullied begins to bully back? Reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Kris Rothstein
Souvenir of Canada
Kris Rothstein reviews Souvenir of Canada, which appeared at the 2005 Vancouver International Film Festival, and Douglas Coupland's role in it and appearance at the festival.
Neil MacDonald
Streeters
Neil MacDonald reviews Streeters, a compilation of Rick Mercer's solo rants and raves from 22 Minutes, covering everything from Mike Harris in a Speedo to "Canuba," a sovereignty association between Canada and Cuba.
Carra Noelle Simpson
Teacher Man
Carra Noelle Simpson reviews Teacher Man and Half Nelson, two works on life in the inner-city high schools of New York.
Michael Hayward
The Bottom of the Harbor
"Old New Yorker writers never die, they just keep being republished in shiny new editions." Michael Hayward reviews collections of New Yorker pieces.
Sewid-Smith Daisy
The Onion
Melissa Edwards finds three references to Sisyphus in three different publications—all in the same day.
Holly Doyle
Thirty-three Teeth
Holly Doyle reviews Colin Cotterill’s novel Thirty-three Teeth, featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun, the seventy-two-year-old coroner of Laos.
Patty Osborne
Through Black Spruce
Joseph Boyden shows a darker side of First Nations life—darker, but not dark enough to stop one from reading it. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Truth is Stranger
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, a lighthearted look at the embarrassing moments in the author's life.
GILLIAN JEROME
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
As a mother-to-be, Gillian Jerome cynically reviewed eight books on child care to glean what it means to be a mother in the twenty-first century.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
White Lung
Hal Niedzviecki says White Lung by Grant Buday is the comic novel that should have been given to delegates at the WTO in Seattle.
Rhonda Waterfall
Pharmacist's Mate
Rhonda Waterfall reviews The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman, just under 100 pages of minimalist prose called "a brief miracle of a book."
Patty Osborne
Pioneer Justice
In The Lynching of Louie Sam, two teenage boys watched as another—an Aboriginal named Louie Sam—was hanged by a group of men who rode on horseback. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.
Lara Jenny
Please Don't Kill the Freshman
During a trip to Portland, Lara Jenny picks a few must-have zines and chapbooks from the city's huge collection of independent presses.
Daniel Francis
Killer Angels
Daniel Francis reviews the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, a minute-by-minute reimagining of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Michael Hayward
Magpie Memoir
Jim Christy muses on 121 items accumulated over 40 years of travel in Sweet Assorted: 121 Takes From a Tin Box, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Kris Rothstein
Miss Smithers
Susan Juby's teen novel Miss Smithers—the story of an eccentric but charming girl entering a beauty pageant in a small BC town—is reviewed by Kris Rothstein.
Vicki Jensen
Blood Sports
Vicki Jensen says Eden Robinson’s novel Blood Sports forces readers to confront exactly what we’d prefer to avoid—the raw world of junkies, crazies and twisted souls.
Joelle Hann
Breasting the Waves: On Writing and Healing
Joanne Arnott "writes with great effort, feeling her way toward expression and sense without giving her life away as if it were in the "miscellaneous" box at a garage sale." Review by Joelle Hann.
Allison Lawlor
Bread and Salt
Allison Lawlor reviews an author reading of Bread and Salt by Renee Rodin.
Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.
Stephen Henighan
Collateral Damage
When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.
Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions
Coming to harbour in a new world.
Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters
Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
Alberto Manguel
Achilles and the Lusitan Tortoise
“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots
"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."
Stephen Henighan
Not Reading
What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.
Alberto Manguel
Library as Wishful Thinking
Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.
Stephen Henighan
Lethal Evolutions
Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.
Stephen Henighan
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far
On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Stephen Henighan
Taíno Tales
A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.
Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
Alberto Manguel
Literature & Morality
Must artists declare their moral integrity?
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
"Leading Men” is taken from a work-in-progress, Cinéma-Verité and the Collected Works of Ronald Reagan: A History of Propaganda in Motion Pictures.
Patty Osborne
Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1899-1929
Patty Osborne reviews Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1899–1929 by Margaret Horsfield, a peek into the lives of the early settlers of the West Coast of Vancouver Island.
JILL MANDRAKE
What Is America? A Short History of the New World Order
Ronald Wright explores the modern history of our southern neighbour in What Is America? A Short History of the New World Order, reviewed by Jill Mandrake.
Robert Everett-Green
The Best of Times
Robert Everett-Green reviews The Best of Times by Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the Madeline stories, consisting of illustrated articles that Bemelmans wrote about his travels through Europe.
Michael Hayward
Famous Foods
Michael Hayward reviews Luke Barr's Provence, 1970, an investigation of the winter when six major culinary figures lived together in France.
Patty Osborne
Closer to Memory Than Imagination
Patty Osborne reviews Air Carnation, a story by Guadalupe Muro that combines the author's personal memoirs with poetry, songwriting and fiction.
Jennesia Pedri
Crossings
Jennesia Pedri reviews Crossings by Betty Lambert.
Stephen Osborne
Praise Song for the Day
"Plain, non-pretentious, utterly mundane: It’snot clear what else an inaugural poem can be." Stephen Osborne reviews Elizabeth Alexander’s poem for Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Michael Hayward
From A to X
Michael Hayward reviews John Berger’s From A to X, a tale of anger, displacement and resistance.
Leah Rae
The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland
Leah Rae reviews The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland: "Finally, a comprehensive collection of fair-to-middlin’ verse for the multilingual."
Michael Hayward
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III
Michael Hayward reviews The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III, a collection of discussions with the leading dramatists, poets and novelists of the past fifty years.
Michael Hayward
Wildwood
Roger Deakin's Wildwood is a heady romp through the world’s forests and their entangled histories. Reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Michael Hayward
Pie Tree Press: Memories from the Composing Room Floor
Michael Hayward reviews the autobiography of Jim Rimmer, a “high priest” of type design and private-press printing.
Stephen Osborne
An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama
Stephen Osborne reviews a collection of Barack Obama's speeches that was surprisingly popular overseas.
Kris Rothstein
Anna’s Shadow
Kris Rothstein reviews Anna's Shadow by David Manicom, "much more than just another post-Cold War thriller."
Stephen Osborne
Kahn & Engelmann
Stephen Osborne reviews Kahn & Engelmann, a German novel by Hans Eichner hailed as a masterpiece in Europe.
Michael Hayward
The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs
Even the healthiest reader can uncover the fatal illness within thanks to The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Leah Rae
The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab
This edge-of-your-seat film follows a Spanish chef on his quest to win the prestigious cooking competition, the Bocuse D’Or. Review by Leah Rae.
Michael Hayward
The Discovery of France
Michael Hayward reviews Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, a scholarly but entertaining history of France’s emergence in the modern era.
Michał Kozłowski
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess
“Adopt a reading pseudonym” is but one piece of advice offered in The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Carrie Villeneuve
When You Leave Town
Carrie Villeneuve reviews a new album from an East Vancouver band that appeals to music fans of all ages.
Thad McIlroy
Slumdog Millionaire
Thad McIlroy reviews Slumdog Millionaire, a 2009 film by Danny Boyle.
Michael Hayward
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
A peek inside Roger Deakin’s living, breathing farmhouse in the waning years of his life in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Lily Gontard
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell uses statistical analyses to prove that location and timing are everything in Outliers: The Story of Success, reviewed by Lily Gontard.