Rescued from the scrapheap
THE LIFE & ART OF FRANK MOLNAR, JACK HARDMAN, LEROY JENSEN
By Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall, Wendy Newbold Patterson
Mother Tongue Publishing
146 pp., $34.95
Review by Brian Brennan
Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman, and LeRoy Jensen were three dedicated and unfashionably tradition-based Vancouver artists of the 1960s who today are largely forgotten. Because they operated outside the confines of the [...]
By the book
WHAT THE FURIES BRING
By Kenneth Sherman
The Porcupine’s Quill
170 pages; $19.95
Review by Frank Moher
What does it mean to be an intellectual? Does it simply mean to think a lot, and vigorously, about something other than yourself? If so, some cab drivers I’ve had are among the most impressive intellectuals in my experience. Does it mean to [...]
Death on the homefront
THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL
By Cathy Marie Buchanan
Harper Collins
307 pages, $22.99
Review by Frank Moher
Halfway through The Day the Falls Stood Still, a first novel by Toronto author Cathy Marie Buchanan, I thought it might be a worthy companion to Timothy Findley’s World War I novel, The Wars — a sort of distaff variation on [...]
Mmm. Bacon.
FISHING FOR BACON
By Michael Davie
NeWest Press
234 pages, $22.95
Review by Frank Moher
Coming-of-age novels are a lot like podcasts: there are too many of them, everyone thinks they can make one, and not everyone is right. They’re also like Twitter messages, predicated as they are on the assumption that just because an experience is universal — bad [...]
Atwood at her dystopic best
YEAR OF THE FLOOD
By Margaret Atwood
McClelland & Stewart
448 pp., $32.99
Review by Rachel Krueger
Margaret Atwood is at her haranguing best when she’s whipping up appalling futures for us all. She’s had several career missteps when her agenda has written cheques that her skills can’t cash, but The Year of the Flood recovers her dormant core [...]
Mad Cows and Hamilton
Review by Frank Moher
Canada’s small publishers are not known for producing summer beach-reading material, but ECW Press has done a decent job of it with Tainted (ECW Press, 312 pp., $24.95). It’s also not every day you come across a thriller featuring, as its central character, the associate medical officer of the Hamilton-Lakeshore Public Health [...]
Purgatory on the Pacific
LEAVING LOVESTIFF ANNIEBy Chris F. NeedhamN.O.N. Publishing185 pages, $19.95
Review by Frank MoherWhat exactly does the disclaimer inside the cover of Chris F. Needham’s new novel, Leaving Lovestiff Annie, mean? “Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or residing in White Rock is entirely coincidental,” it reads.
Does this suggest that the retiree/resort community just south of [...]
Billy Elliot’s big-city jive
By Frank Moher
Best Tony Awards telecast in years last night. (You did watch, didn’t you? I’m not the only Canadian who watches the Tony Awards, am I? I am? Thought so.)
That said, allow me to gripe about Billy Elliot, which danced away with 10 awards, including Best Musical. Actually, my gripe is with the original [...]
Arthur Erickson, 1924 – 2009
By Frank Moher
Arthur Erickson, the great architect who died in Vancouver yesterday at age 84, was an artist who became great by remaining where he was. This was in marked contrast to many other western Canadian artists and thinkers, who achieved fame and success by moving away — or at least thought they needed to. [...]