Category: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

A review of Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems by Melissa Ridley Elmes

Taking on a legend is never an easy task, and the Arthurian legend is ages old and feels as if it were set in stone. In her collection of poems giving voice to Arthurian Things, Melissa Ridley Elmes has undertaken to add to the canon of Arthuriana poems that imagine voices, tell tales, and create scenes in which the once-and-future King Arthur and his knights are endowed with humor and humanity.

Pay Attention – Taste – Remember: Review of Diane LeBlanc’s Poetry Collection, The Feast Delayed

In LeBlanc’s poetry, grief enters through the senses, often the sense of taste. The collection is imbued with flavors. While I read, they lingered on my tongue. In some of the poems, the flavors are bitter and reflect the bitterness of loss and injustice. The prose poem “Expired” takes us through the journey of cleaning out the spice cupboard, of searching out the jars past their expiration dates.

A review of Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters by Maya Sonenberg

As the reader gets into the stories, the fairytale nature of their shortcomings likewise becomes clear, giving these stories an air of fable – not a moral lesson so much as an insight into human frailties and failings, both mothers and their offspring, merely two sides of the same coin; a parade of characters who come up short. 

A review of Breathing Lake Superior by Ron Rindo

I was drawn to the novel because of geographic sentiment, being a Canadian raised on a small farm in the rigorous climate of Northern Ontario, and having  relatives who live on the northern shore of Lake Superior. I was soon caught up in a timely story, full of vivid imagery and unforgettable characters – a tragedy in a beautiful landscape.

A review of How Icasia Bloom Touched Happiness by Jessica Bell

Like the best sci fi writers, Bell doesn’t hesitate to draw out the parallels between her futuristic world and our own, using the imaginary to highlight the all-too-real.  What is also obvious is that there are some aspects of life that are core to happiness, no matter the context: love, empathy, and care.

A review of Witches, Women and Words by Beatriz Copello

In Beatriz Copello’s powerful and imaginative poetry collection Witches, Women & Words, witches are seers, healers and instigators of change who are capable of restoring balance both to society and to the individual. They embody that intuitive and creative side of ourselves that reveals a deeper truth. The poems are visceral, full of irony and wisdom, taking the reader on a transformative journey that ultimately expresses hope.

A review of Our Laundry, Our Town by Alvin Eng

For Alvin Eng, a Chinese American punk rocker who is now an educator and a playwright, this has meant ‘a spiritual state of homelessness,” moving between the Foo J. Chin Chinese Hand Laundry and an American frame of reference. This reflective and personal narrative is his first memoir, and a change from his dramatic writing.

A review of A Longing for Impossible Things by David Borofka

Regardless of the failings of his narrators and assorted ne’er do well characters, these tales are told in a generous, recognizably human voice, marking Borofka as a writer in whose company you’ll find deep pleasure. Characters’ failings are both unflinchingly observed and held in tender, witty regard, even after a lifetime of screw ups. Most are wrestling with the gap between their modest youthful dreams and the limits imposed by adult realities.

A review of How to Be Between by Bastian Fox Phelan

Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoir How to Be Between leans right into these societal norms, exposing them for the controlling mechanisms that they are, designed to make use feel chronically inadequate so we’re easier to sell to or control. These norms force an unnatural binary between male and female, attractive and unattractive, straight and queer. How to Be Between rejects these binaries and instead offers up the possibility of living a life without such constraints.