book review

My Winnipeg, a book that contains filmmaker Guy (The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon the Brain) Maddin's annotated script for his eponymous 2007 Documentary Channel-commissioned movie about his home town, will not get you any closer to an understanding of the city. It will, however, drop you rather precisely in the psychic locale, which is to say his Winnipeg. It's one odd place.

Chase and Haven is Oxford Mills resident Michael Blouin's first novel, published last fall – exactly a year after the publication of his poetry collection I'm not going to lie to you (Pedlar Press 2007). One can sense the seasoned poet lurking behind the lines of this careful, measured work of fiction.

Amphibian, the debut novel by Fredericton writer Carla Gunn, is the story of Phineas Walsh, an 'eco-anxious' nine-year-old with an encyclopedic knowledge of animals and nature and a penchant for staring off into space. Phin is a disarming character with the intelligence and vulnerability of Salinger's Holden Caulfield and the clear-thinking non-conformity of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.

(Four out of five stars)

I've always felt a kinship to Claudia Dey, both of us being right-brained alumni of the same lawyer- and engineer-producing high school. The florid style of her plays and her Globe and Mail advice column has a timeless, nearly ethereal quality. Stunt, her first novel, brings to mind the poetry of Gwendolyn Mac-Ewen (the subject of Dey's play The Gwendolyn Poems) or prose of British author Jeanette Winterson, with its mythological allusions and shape-shifting characters.

This article is about dreams come true. Jessica Westhead has written a hilarious novel called Pulpy and Midge, from which she read at last Monday’s Cooked and Eaten reading series. Her book came out just last week from Coach House Books. For Jessica Westhead, that is a dream come true. But here’s the better news: Westhead is a Trent graduate. She has an English degree. She works as a writer and editor. Take heart, fellow English majors! Westhead has become the hero of Trent humanities students.

http://stevenwbeattie.com/2007/10/02/the-novelist-at-play/