Book Reviews

If you were young and gay in late 1980s Alberta, it seemed you were always waiting. You were waiting for news from the big world in Vancouver, and Toronto, and New York—from friends, from tricks, [...]

The Doll isn’t a typical children’s story. An autobiographical tale by Nhung Tran-Davies, it tackles the refugee crisis, surviving stormy seas, and racism. It’s a lot to pack into a handful of [...]

Amy LeBlanc’s debut novella begins with the words of Euphemia Rosenbaum, an eccentric and mysterious woman in the small town of Snowton, Alberta: “Here’s what I’ve always said: a goldfish will [...]

A new Glen Huser book is always welcome, whatever its subject. Huser is one of the steady, quiet lights of Alberta’s writing world—an excellent author who is often underappreciated, which I hope [...]

Stories are medicine, and Richard Van Camp’s Gather is medicine Canadians need right now. The book is imbued with joy and playfulness and is the perfect companion read on our journey back to each [...]

Politics and activism are central themes in the history of women in western Canada, and Compelled to Act contributes to this literature in significant new ways. Edited and with an introduction by [...]

During the 19th century, its own employees often joked that the Hudson’s Bay Company’s initials (HBC) stood for “Here Before Christ.” For many Canadians, there has always been a Hudson’s Bay [...]

The estranged (and deranged) loner who takes refuge in the wilds on the fringes of settlement is a familiar trope in North American storytelling. I think of Rudy Wiebe’s mad trapper, Albert [...]

Leaving home for the first time is already fraught for a teenager. But for the non-binary narrator of Green Glass Ghosts, a young queer person who has fled Calgary for the supposedly more [...]

Norma Dunning’s Tainna: The Unseen Ones picks up many of the themes of her prizewinning debut, Annie Muktuk and Other Stories, but these six new stories have even more of an edge. The lives of [...]