Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
With Canada’s federal liberal party leadership race coming to a close today, and a copy of the Booker–nominated novel, Scar Tissue, sitting unread on my book shelf, I decided to sit down yesterday and see for myself what I could learn about Michael Ignatieff.
Reviewing a collection of poems and short prose by Roo Borson is like reviewing a book of scripture. There is something in her voice that is spiritual, something that speaks, perhaps, beyond ordinary experience. And so a simple review is pointless, impossible even.
With her third novel, Mean Boy, Lynn Coady takes several risks which leave the reader wondering: is this just another solidly crafted book? or might it qualify as something more substantial?
I despise Margaret Atwood. Living as I do in Toronto, such a statement may come off sounding like blasphemy. How can you say such a thing? ask the pious onlookers. It is precisely because I am from Toronto that I despise her.
So there I was, two weeks ago, lounging by the side of a pool in Punta Cana, reading Runaway, Alice Munro’s latest collection of short stories, when a woman in a bikini stopped at the foot of my chair and said: “I’ve started reading that, too. Just finished the first story. So what’s with the goat? Did the husband really kill the goat?”