And so we enter into the fiction with both curiosity and fascination, which Gammon masterfully both milks and sustains as she gives us the details, enough to keep us guessing, like voyeurs, like amateur sleuths, as though we might deduce the truth from her fiction—it’s seduction and frankly ingenious.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of Refugee by Pamela Uschuk
As Uschuk probes the wounds of contemporary existence, we see how deeply she understands human suffering. Fortunately for readers, the author also brings abundant love for this difficult, complicated world that somehow keeps going. As “The Essential Shape” (100) reminds us, “Spinning, the earth begins” again, and “shapes itself with fingers of light.”
An Inner Habitat for Searching: a Review of Rewild by Meredith Stricker
I do not think Rewild suggests that love will save the human race. Rather, it brings us to consider that by participating in love we will save love, perhaps contributing to its existence and triumph in the cosmos—animism from an earlier human understanding of the world, wielded against indifference. We can infer the possibility of a universe without mankind.
A review of SEO 2023: Learn Search Engine Optimization With Smart Internet Marketing Strategies by Adam Clarke
Clarke’s book is an impressive, comprehensive guide that dexterously navigates the complex and often cryptic universe of SEO. It’s a challenging task to make such a technical subject palatable to a diverse audience, but Clarke manages to do so with aplomb.
A review of The Lottery and Corruption in the U.S. by Harold Rosen
Reviewed by Dale Shelabarger Lottery Corruption, U.S.A by Harold Rosen AuthorHouse November 2020, Paperback, 204 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1665506649 The game of chance has fascinated humanity for centuries, creating a compelling narrative of luck, fate, and fortune. And none is more…
A review of The Misconceiver by Lucy Ferriss
It’s gobsmacking how much author and prognosticator Lucy Ferris got right in this book, first published in 1997 and reissued in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Ubiquitous online access, electronic payments, electric vehicles, environmental destruction, codified discrimination against gays and lesbians — the Lucy Ferris of the 1990s foresaw this current, fraught decade with uncanny accuracy.
A review of Bad Art Mother By Edwina Preston
There is so much about this book that is compelling. It manages to be both funny and tragic at the same time, without stereotypes or polemic. Though there are moments of bad behaviour on the part of pretty much every character, nothing is over-simplified. There are as many different ways to create art, from Jo’s food or charity work, to the Mirka Mora styled murals of Jo’s waitress Rosa, or the ikebana flower arrangements of Mrs Parish, as there are ways to be a partner, a parent, or a patron.
A review of Just Outside the Tunnel of Love by Francine Witte
There’s heartbreak and humor, magic and flawed humanity, disappointment and longing, charming wordplay and breathtaking literary craft, but no happy endings. Cheating husbands and boyfriends abound, as do unreliable fathers, disappointed girlfriends and deceived women stretching all the way back to Eve. Literally.
A review of And to Ecstasy by Marion Mossammaparast
One of the poet’s salient concerns is life, the fragility of life, death as well the afterlife. I was fascinated about the metaphysical aspects of her works, works that are coloured by the brush of mythology, philosophy and religion. In this beautiful collection of poems she utilises many literary devices with extraordinary skills. Her voice is strong as a sirocco yet is gentle as a resting heartbeat.
On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche
Nobody needs a manuscript. Nobody needs a short story. Or a poetry collection. Or the next great American novel. Recounting James Baldwin’s advice in the Paris Review to ‘Write. Find a way to keep alive and write,’ Marche distills the bulk of dozens of pages of wisdom into four words: discipline, love, luck, and endurance. But these can all be distilled to endurance.