Book Reviews

Prairie Ostrich

Prairie Ostrich

“The Japanese part has got to go,” Egg Murakami says to herself as she tries to brush off and survive another day of school bullying. It’s 1974 in a small prairie town, Buttercreek, Alberta, and the only Japanese-Canadian family—The Murakamis—are falling apart after...

Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac

Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac

Yin weaves together images and mythology from both the Eastern and the Western worlds, creating a universe where the extraordinary is ordinary. Anna Yin is a vivid dreamer. In her newest poetry collection, Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac, Yin weaves together...

The Kingdom and After

The Kingdom and After

Surreal, intense, and intimate. Moving seamlessly through a myriad of cities and countries, Megan Fernandes’s The Kingdom and After is a dreamlike trip charting the temporal human experience in a world that seems to be shrinking. A mix of prose-like paragraphs and...

The Homes We Build on Ashes

The Homes We Build on Ashes

Park explores the spiritual resilience of women in the face of colonial and domestic violence. Christina Park’s contemplative, slow-burning debut novel The Homes We Build on Ashes reaches far—geographically, emotionally, and spiritually. Following the life of a Korean...

Bodymap

Bodymap

This book is pure Piepzna-Samarasinha—tough and full of desire; it needs to be flaunted in all its glory. Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha uses Dawn’s quote as a preface, setting up a bold framework for what’s to come. This book is pure...

The Mystics of Mile End

The Mystics of Mile End

The Mystics of Mile End is a smart, compelling, and, at times, magical read—a promising introduction to a young author who might one day be counted among Canada’s finest. In the early pages of The Mystics of Mile End, the first of four narrators, eleven-year-old Lev...

Boy Lost in Wild

Boy Lost in Wild

The protagonists who inhabit Boy Lost in Wild, Brenda Hasiuk’s debut collection of short stories, exist in the brief space lodged between childhood and adulthood. The protagonists who inhabit Boy Lost in Wild, Brenda Hasiuk’s debut collection of short stories, exist...

The Freedom in American Songs

The Freedom in American Songs

Once in a while, a writer comes along who speaks to your heart, gut, and funny bone all at the same time. Kathleen Winter is one of those writers. Her story “Knives,” from her engaging short story collection The Freedom in American Songs, starts breezily—a boy with...

One Hundred Days of Rain

One Hundred Days of Rain

We enter the narrative after the fight, after the authorities are called, after the unnamed protagonist leaves and the rain has started. “She has always liked that,” drums the narrator in a tone which persists as poetically matter-of-fact, at times as bleak as the...

For Your Own Good

For Your Own Good

Leah Horlick’s second collection of poetry is a fictionalized autobiography that focuses on a violent lesbian relationship. Leah Horlick’s second collection of poetry, For Your Own Good, is a fictionalized autobiography that focuses on a violent lesbian relationship....

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ROOM 47.4 FULL CIRCLE
Step back with Room into the past, to parents, to childhood homes, and to people once known and loved; dig into themes of grief and healing; and ultimately explore what it means to come full circle in literature.

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