Book Reviews

women & roosters by Fenn Stewart Book*hug Press 80 pages $23 Fenn Stewart’s second collection of poetry, women & roosters, unfolds as a single long poem that circles around themes of climate change, loneliness, and our relationships with one another and the...

To Place a Rabbit by Madhur Anand Knopf Canada 240 pages $33 The phrase “to place a rabbit”—poser un lapin—translates as “to commit to doing something but not show up for it.” Doubling as the title of Madhur Anand’s debut novel, the expression at once captures the...

Here by Heidi Wicks Breakwater Books 232 pages $23 In Heidi Wicks’ Here, home is not a person; it is the legacy of those who once inhabited the spaces that shape us, even if we’ve never met them. From a twentieth-century aristocratic couple to a COVID-19-era dance...

The Midnight Project by Christy Climenhage Wolsak & Wynn 294 pages $24 The genetic engineers in Christy Climenhage’s speculative novel The Midnight Project carry enormous guilt over the unintended consequences of their earlier work. Formerly employed in the...

Birdology by Carolyne Van Der Meer Cactus Press 26 pages $10 Comprising 14 works of flash essays and poems, Birdology is Montreal poet Carolyne Van Der Meer’s fifth collection. Using sparrows and their folklore as a starting point, Van Der Meer connects the lives of...

The Fun Times Brigade  by Lindsay Zier-Vogel Book*hug Press 362 pages $25 This spring, at the start of my maternity leave, I had the pleasure of reading Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s second novel, The Fun Times Brigade. It wasn’t my first baby, but I’d somehow forgotten so...

Crohnic  by Jason Purcell Arsenal Pulp Press 104 pages $20 In Jason Purcell’s sophomore poetry collection, Crohnic, we are invited into an intimate exploration of the author’s treatment for Crohn’s disease (reflected in the collection’s clever title), alongside...

Parade of Storms by Evelyn Lau Anvil Press 76 pages $18 In her tenth poetry collection, former Vancouver poet laureate Evelyn Lau places weather at the forefront, interweaving reflections on grief, illness, and mortality. Divided into five sections, Lau’s work...

Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Maggie Helwig Coach House Books 176 pages $25 In Encampment, a hard-hitting, soft-spoken melee of memoir, homily, and exposé, Maggie Helwig lays bare Toronto’s homelessness crisis and the systems underpinning...

Endsickness by Sofia Alarcon Conundrum Press 150 pages $25 The cover of Endsickness, Sofia Alarcon’s debut collection of graphic stories, pays homage to Frida Kahlo’s 1938 painting What the Water Gave Me, often considered to be her first surrealist work. In Kahlo’s...