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Gina Roitman

Forest for the Trees

Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe, by Charlotte Gill, Greystone Books

by Gina Roitman
05.02.2012

Travelling by camper van around New Zealand, a land where 70% of the endemic forests have disappeared over the last 180 years, there seemed no more suitable place to crack open Charlotte Gill’s riveting and disturbing account of 20 years as a tree-planter in the forests of Canada. Make that, a tree-planter where the forests used to be.

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OCCUPY CHRISTMAS

God Rest Ye Merry Fressers

Some of my best friends celebrate Christmas!

by Gina Roitman
23.12.2011

Growing up Jewish in a world that celebrates Christmas in a myriad of ways – in song, in lights, in trees, and in gift-giving – can be torture. It generates a terrible yearning for things verboten like belting out three verses of Joy to the World or artfully draping tinsel on the tree you wrestled into a corner of the living room.

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BOOKS

Body Language

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar, Hamish Hamilton Canada

by Gina Roitman
28.08.2011

“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest.” With this tender opening sentence, Hisham Matar begins to weave a subtle pattern of absence and loss that defines the emotional territory of Anatomy of a Disappearance, his second novel.

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BOOKS

I Screech, Therefore I Am

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, by Benjamin Hale, Twelve (Hatchette Book Group)

by Gina Roitman
19.06.2011

Up until a young Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees stripping bark off twigs to “fish” for termites, the ability to make tools is what distinguished humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. In 1960, the untrained Goodall sent a telegram to her mentor Louis Leakey with news of her discovery, unsure how to document it. [...]

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BOOKS

Bullies, Betrayal, Brutality — and Joy

Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman, House of Anansi Press

by Gina Roitman
13.03.2011

In his auspicious debut novel, Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman catches us unawares, drawing us into the chaotic and compelling world of Harrison Opoku. Eleven year old Harri has emigrated from Ghana with his mother and older sister to the mean streets of East London, a neighborhood that has been grinding down immigrants for hundreds of [...]

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BOOKS

The Disclosing Animal

Half Empty, by David Rakoff, Doubleday Canada

by Gina Roitman
03.01.2011

There is something perverse in reviewing a book called Half Empty when you’re a glass-half-full kind of gal. Maybe I took on the challenge to see the world through the eyes of those friends and family who have often been the negative ions to my annoyingly positive charge. If this seems a tad personal, I [...]

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BOOKS

Having Sadness and Eating It Too

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender, Doubleday

by Gina Roitman
04.10.2010

In her second novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender takes some simple ingredients—an appealing protagonist and a talent for storytelling—to concoct a delicate, richly nuanced narrative about an ordinary family with some extraordinary abilities.

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