There was a kids’ show years ago that had a puppet who sang This is the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends… That singing lamb never shut up. I sing it to myself sometimes, like halfway through Nairne Holtz’s second book, This One’s Going to Last Forever. Maybe because the [...]

As a child growing up in St. John’s, Newfoundland in the 1950s, actor and funny man Greg Malone lived in a world of institutionalized violence. His teachers gladly punished students with the strap for minor indiscretions. His father’s unpredictable temper fostered horrible tensions in a generally unhappy house. Despite all this, You Better Watch Out, [...]

Literary synchronicity. We are embroiled in an internal philosophical debate or episode of existential angst, and a book appears that addresses the very question we are obsessing over. A friend who knows nothing about our internal machinations happens to place just the right book in our hands, or we find a pertinent paperback in a [...]

If this book were a movie, Charlie Kaufman would write the screenplay. No wide-angle lenses here — close-ups for everyone. Forget the establishing shot. We’ll show detail, not setting; emotions, not plots. Are you confused yet? Good – because so are the characters.

This terse biography arrives as part of a Penguin series, Extraordinary Canadians, each one to be followed up by a documentary film. John Ralston Saul, the series editor, sums up the overall aim of the project by saying: “When all these stories are put together, you will see that a whole new debate has been [...]

At the very end of Nino Ricci’s fifth novel, Alex Fratarcangeli “slipped quietly…into his life.” Throughout Origin of Species, which uses the theory of evolution both metaphorically and thematically, quietness and life are set up in a complex tension. Over the expanse of almost 500 pages Ricci’s passive protagonist moves, with little steps, from quietness [...]

Coming Attractions is an annual collection of three stories by each of three up-and-coming Canadian writers, a format that allows one to really get a sense of the writers’ voices. In the ’08 edition, Rebecca Rosenblum, Daniel Griffin, and Alice Petersen show why they are gaining ground in the writing world, with short tales like [...]