The British Columbia Review is the online book review journal for BC writers and readers.
The Prize
A Poem by Gary Geddes
“Editor’s note: Gary Geddes wishes to convey his hope that the selections above help readers to remember the costs of war.”
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/08/06/2252-geddes-hiroshima/
Happy. Unhappy. Happy Enough.
However Far Away (House of Anansi Press, 2024) by Rajinderpal S. Pal.
“…a precise, pensive book…”
Reviewed by Jessica P**n.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/08/05/2251-poon-pal/
Finding Community Through Quilting
Knots and Stitches: Community Quilts Across the Harbour (Caitlin Press, 2023) by Kristin Miller.
“A lot goes on inside the book too: a memoir, a meditation on community and friendship, friendships which continue longer than love, an evocation of landscape, hope for the future.”
Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/08/02/2250-reeve-miller/
‘A multi-generational family saga’
Searching for Billie: A journalist’s quest to understand his mother’s past leads him to discover a vanished China (Blacksmith Books, 2024) by Ian Gill.
“The book offers rich insights into aspects of Chinese geography and history many readers will probably know little about.”
Reviewed by Tom Koppel.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/08/01/2249-koppel-gill/
Understanding Major Infectious Disease Events
The Hidden Zoo Inside You: An Illustrated Guide to Pesky Organisms and Pandemics (Granville Island Publishing, 2024) by Dr. Allen Jones, M.D.
“…an easy-to-read and -digest book that goes to great lengths to explain medical basics and put this pandemic in perspective relative to past (and inevitably, future) diseases.”
Reviewed by Tom Koppel.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/31/2248-koppel-jones/
Professional Triumphs, Adversities
The Role of Canadian City Managers: In Their Own Words (University of Toronto Press, 2023) Edited by Michael Fenn, Gordon McIntosh, and David Siegel.
“…penned by municipal administrators, former city councillors, and city managers across Canadian municipalities; they offer firsthand accounts and testimonials of their professional experiences.”
Reviewed by Ryan Mitchell.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/30/2247-fenn-mcintosh-mitchell-siegel/
Living with Oil?
An Essay by Natalie Virgina Lang.
“On July 18, 2024, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault commented on the funding announcement of eighty-nine million dollars for ten projects aimed at promoting biodiversity across Canada…”
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/29/2246-lang-essay-living-with-oil/
Scorched Memories
Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism, and Life Before the Fire (Penguin Random House Canada, 2024) by Peter Edwards and Kevin Loring.
“…an in-depth exploration of the history and environment of the small Canadian town of Lytton, British Columbia (BC).”
Reviewed by Amy Tucker.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/26/2245-tucker-loring-edwards/
Murder Spree: ‘a means to an end’
Murder Times Six: The True Story of the Wells Gray Park Murders (Self Published, 2020) by Alan R. Warren.
“Warren’s investigation into the Wells Gray murders is steeped in personality, giving character to his commentary on the Canadian judicial system that is unique and empathetic in its insights.”
Reviewed by Matthew Downey.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/26/2244-downey-warren/
Writers: a new ‘how-to’ philosophy
Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing (Second Edition including Ten Additional Essays) (Cormorant Books, 2023) by Betsy Warland.
“…a valuable and necessary companion to any writer.”
Reviewed by Natalie Virginia Lang.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/25/2243-warland-lang/
Artist’s Ego → Artist Psychodrama
The Mythmakers (McClelland & Stewart, 2024) by Keziah Weir.
“a captivating, well-written novel with plenty of flashbacks and a plot twist whose satisfying cleverness is not hinged on unprecedented, you-never-would-have-guessed-it sneakiness, but rather, a twist whose effectiveness is contingent on truly understanding the characters’ psychologies and predilections for alteration, machination, and mythologizing.”
Reviewed by Jessica P**n.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/24/2242-poon-weir/
Dysfunction, drama, secrets, lies
The Off Season (Simon & Schuster Canada, 2024) by Amber Cowie.
“…Cowie delivers unforeseen plot twists with macabre ease. The Off Season is a thriller suitable for all seasons, but try to read it when there’s bad weather—it’s more atmospheric that way.”
Reviewed by Jessica P**n.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/23/2241-poon-cowie/
Prioritizing global health
Hand on my Heart: A Canadian Doctor’s Awakening in Afghanistan (Caitlin Press, 2023) by Maureen Mayhew.
“With this memoir, Dr. Mayhew evocatively describes her experiences working in Afghanistan. Her descriptions of events both big and small are vivid and help the reader see the common humanity in a country that is often vilified in the mainstream media.”
Reviewed by Dr. Laura Sauvé.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/22/2240-sauve-mayhew/
Hallucinatory Noir
Stasio: A Novel in 3 Parts (Anvil Press, 2024) by Tamas Dobozy.
“Each offers us insight into his unique investigative style while also serving as a window into three distinct points of his progressively paranoid and unsustainable personal life.”
Reviewed by Logan Macnair.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/22/2239-macnair-dobozy/
Definitions of Home
Islander (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2024) by Mona Fertig.
“This book of new poems, Islander, is a celebration of Fertig’s distinctive, clarifying voice, her commitment to artistic expression, family, community, and her renewed excitement with her own writing.”
Reviewed by Cathy Ford.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/21/2238-ford-fertig/
So…what now?
Apocalypse Child: Surviving Doomsday and the Search for Identity at the End of the World (Caitlin Press, 2024) by Carly Butler.
“It is a compelling memoir of a woman who had a strange upbringing. While reading it, you will experience the trauma of the author’s compelling journey since childhood.”
Reviewed by Valerie Green.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/20/2237-green-butler/
Of nature, and human nature
Arctic Patrol: Canada’s Fight for Arctic Sovereignty (Caitlin Press, 2024) by Eric Jamieson.
“…this is a book not just of boundaries and ideas, but of ice, animals—and people.”
Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/20/2236-dombrowski-jamieson/
Ancestry and Legacy
Tomorrow (Hancock House Publishers, 2024) by Valerie Green.
“Revealing similarities with the path of Point Ellice House Museum, a real heritage site near the setting of Providence, Green offers a vital and hopeful vision of a future beyond Tomorrow.”
Reviewed by Vanessa Winn.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/18/2235-winn-green/
Capturing ‘Lebanon’s enduring nightmare’
The Struggle Continues: An Arduous Journey of Hope (FriesenPress, 2023) by Christopher Thomson.
“As a novel, The Struggle Continues, even with the best of intentions to convey the horror of that trauma, is a bit of an arduous journey.”
Reviewed by Larry Hannant.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/18/2234-hannant-thomson/
Clothe Local
Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands (Heritage House, 2023) by Francine McCabe.
“[Fleece and Fibre] seeks to inspire this same revolution and return to local living by introducing us to the people that grow the fibres used to make the clothing and textiles we need to shelter ourselves.”
Reviewed by Sarah Thornton.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/17/2233-thornton-mccabe/
Where ‘words wander about’
A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024) by Kevin Spenst.
“Kevin Spenst, in his latest poetry collection, dispenses, speculates, and apprehends, through ranging terrains—self, relationships, and semantic antics, often with inventive surrealities.”
Reviewed by Steven Ross Smith.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/16/2232-spenst-smith/
The horror! The horror! The horror!
We Used to Live Here (Atria Books/Emily Bestler Books, 2024) by Marcus Kliewer.
“The mind-bending trajectory of this story makes for a thrilling experience for readers.”
Reviewed by Zoe McKenna.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/14/2231-mckenna-kliewer/
![‘Violet notions’[about]ness (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023) by Eimear Laffan.“This reader ponders the matter con...](https://img3.medioq.com/037/306/1242745400373068.jpg)
‘Violet notions’
[about]ness (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023) by Eimear Laffan.
“This reader ponders the matter continually through the marvellous poetic constructions that stretch the bounds of current normative poetry.”
Reviewed by Steven Ross Smith.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/13/2230-laffan-smith/
A River’s Tale
The Heart of a River (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes (illustrated by Nichola Lytle).
“The book is likely to appeal more to the early teens than youngsters, but the little ones will get excited by the idea of rolling along on the waves of the fourth largest river network in North America.”
Reviewed by Ron Verzuh.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/12/2229-verzuh-delehanty-pearkes/
Where Salmon Once Swam
A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes.
“ By describing her voyage up the Columbia we see the present but also the past of this great stretch of water…”
Reviewed by Ron Verzuh.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/10/2228-verzuh-pearkes/
Colonial Diary for Historical Context
Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent: The Everyday Life of a Canadian Englishman, 1842-1898 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021) by J.I. Little.
“…provides historian J. I. Little an unrivalled qualitative vista into a rural history that intersected with a host of issues characteristic of the Victorian settler experience…”
Reviewed by Jeff Oliver.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/10/2227-oliver-little/
Discovering Urban Nature Through Art
Exploring Vancouver Naturehoods: An Artist’s Sketchbook Journal (Midtown Press, 2023) by Vicky Earle.
“…this engaging journal that chronicles the places and species most likely to catch your attention from the smelly scales of a shaggy scalycap mushroom she found in Pacific Spirit Park to the unique preening toenail of a great blue heron that she watched at Jericho.”
Reviewed by Briony Penn.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/09/2226-penn-earle/
MacDonald’s Vision
To See What He Saw: J.E.H. MacDonald and the O’Hara Years: 1924-1932 (Figure 1 Publishing, with the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, 2024) by Stanley Munn and Patricia Cucman.
“To See How He Saw by Stanley Munn and Patricia Cucman has given me new eyes to see the area in a more nuanced, reflective and memorable manner.”
Reviewed by Ron Dart.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/08/2225-dart-munn-cucman/
‘Nuanced mountain and landscape life’
Alpine Anatomy: The Mountain Art of Arnold Shives (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby Art Gallery, and Tricouni Press, 2012) by Bill Jeffries, Darrin Martens, and Glenn Woodsworth (eds.).
“Alpine Anatomy judiciously threads together Shives’s nuanced mountain and landscape life, the texts in the book fleshing and filling out Shives’s artistic journey and how such a journey is reflected in his paintings and why.”
Reviewed by Ron Dart.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/08/2224-dart-shives/
‘The bright spots, and dark corners…”
Points of Interest: In Search of the Places, People, and Stories of BC (Greystone Books, 2024) by David Beers and andrea bennett (eds.).
“…this anthology was curated from a list 20 years in the making at The Tyee, an online independent BC news magazine founded in 2003. It features some of the Tyee’s narrative pieces…”
Reviewed by Dave Flawse.
Clickable Link in Bio: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/07/05/2223-flawse-bennett-beers/
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Vancouver, BC
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