by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Fiction
The protagonists in the short-story collection Leaving Berlin are typically failed romantics who have been forced to change their perception of the world. The reader is invited to look over the shoulders of characters at the same time as entering their point of view...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Fiction
Think of the word “mongrel” and the image of a mixed-breed dog comes to mind. In this case, the term refers to the ethnically mixed protagonists in Montreal writer Marko Sijan’s debut collection of short fiction. Replete with sex, violence and moral ambiguity, his...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Fiction
In 1915, at the time of the First World War, the Canadian government rounded up male Ukrainian immigrants and placed them in camps. Because Austria had taken over Ukraine and because Canada was now at war with Austria, these men were regarded as enemy aliens. In her...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Fiction
Suspicion, as the reader may suspect, is a mystery, but it’s much more than that. I very much enjoyed it, despite the fact that we more or less know, or think we know, what has happened. This is a book with multiple viewpoints, but the shifting views work well as the...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Non-Fiction
Always an Adventure is an upbeat and life-affirming story of one ordinary man who has made “a relatively successful career” (vii) and a happy, fulfilling existence for himself. (By ordinary, I imply no disrespect. I simply mean not a prime minister or a rock star, not...
by prfire | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Reviews, Non-Fiction
Embodied in a wonderful cover illustration, the title A Woman Clothed in Words is a phrase twice abducted, from a Szumigalski poem which, like a shaman’s robe, is itself woven from sacred flotsam, favourite lines from Patrick Friesen, into an homage to him, “The Thin...
