Jan Wong’s Globe and Mail blues
OUT OF THE BLUE By Jan Wong Self-published by Jan Wong, distributed by Dundurn 264 pages, $21.99, paperback Reviewed by Brian Brennan Jan Wong was a star of The Globe and Mail newsroom, a driven, gutsy, award-winning reporter who observed the Tiananmen Square massacre at first hand, and tested the limits of Canada’s airport security [...]
The Inside Read: “Crossing the Continent” by Michel Tremblay
We’re pleased to unveil backofthebook.ca’s Inside Read, in which we’ll introduce you to new Canadian books with an excerpt that we think will whet your appetite for more. In this passage from Michel Tremblay’s new novel Crossing the Continent, translated by Sheila Fischman, 10-year old Rhéauna (based on Tremblay’s mother as a child) must leave [...]
GG gee we need to rethink this
By Frank Moher The Governor General’s Award finalists were announced on Tuesday and, as usual, I looked at the drama list and sighed. Not because I wasn’t on it — I didn’t have anything eligible — but because I was reminded once again that we don’t have a proper playwriting award in this country. Now, [...]
Young Adult fiction: the poison is the antidote
by Rachel Krueger Meghan Cox Gurdon’s Wall Street Journal article on the “explicit abuse, violence and depravity” grown rife in YA fiction must come either from a place of willful blindness or an actual dark rock, under which she has been living. Granted, YA fiction has gotten more sexually explicit since 1973 when Judy Blume’s [...]
The Protocols of Jonathan Kay
AMONG THE TRUTHERS By Jonathan Kay Harper Collins 368 pages, $32.99 hardcover, $25.99 ebook Reviewed by Frank Moher On the evening of Saturday, June 26, 2010, Jonathan Kay headed out on his bike into the streets of Toronto to see what was up with the G20. What he saw, he wrote early the next morning [...]
On the outskirts of Salacioustown
ALONE IN THE CLASSROOM By Elizabeth Hay McClelland & Stewart 320 pages, $29.95 Review By Rachel Krueger The blurb-o-matics must be killing themselves over this. Alone in the Classroom has NO PLOT. Or it has many plots. A surfeit of plots. Thank god it also has ssssssecrets. (And is weirdly amazing.) It begins with the [...]
A Dance With Dragons: Worth the Wait?
By Rachel Krueger George R R Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire, while long a big deal in fantasy basements, is now officially a Big Deal™. The HBO series based on the first installation, A Game of Thrones, has both brought the series into the fantasy-abjuring eye and put a much-appreciated amount of pressure [...]
Doctors healing themselves
BENEVOLENCE By Cynthia Holz Alfred A. Knopf Canada 310 pages, $29.95 Review by Tara Hughes From its shocking opening to its moving conclusion, Cynthia Holz’s new novel, Benevolence, examines the destructive effects of fear and spiritual exhaustion on a marriage, and the rough healing that sometimes follows. Holz takes the reader deep into the lives [...]
Bad jokes are good PR
by Rachel Krueger Amy Chua is terrible at jokes. She told one in early January about forcing her seven-year old daughter to practice piano “through dinner into the night” with no breaks, and no one laughed. The punchline is that the daughter got good at piano. Har. An excerpt from Chua’s memoir, The Battle Hymn [...]
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