mtlreviewofbooks.ca • FREE/ISSUE 55

mSPRING 2018 MORbNTREAL REVIEW OF BOOKS

Regime Change Dimitri Nasrallah Stages a Literary Coup d’État

INSIDE

PAIGE COOPER’S ZOLITUDE SUSAN ELMSLIE’S MUSEUM OF KINDNESS ELAINE CRAIG’S PUTTING TRIALS ON TRIAL MÉLANIE GRONDIN’S THE ART AND PASSION OF GUIDO NINCHERI SHANNON WEBB-CAMPBELL AT THE SALON DU LIVRE DES PREMIÈRES NATIONS

mRb cont ents mtlreviewofbooks.ca SPRING 2018 Volume 21 No .2

Montreal Review of Books is published by the features non-fiction young adult 21 Clutch Association of English-language Publishers 4 Dimitri Nasrallah 18 Antigone Undone By Heather Camlot By Jeff Miller By Will Aitken of Quebec ( AELAQ ). Reviewed by Peter Dubé Ophelia Circulation: 45,000 9 Susan Elmslie By Charlotte Gingras By Abby Paige Free Public Transit Translated by Christelle Morelli Edited by Judith Dellheim and Jason Prince 10 and Susan Ouriou Anna Leventhal Publisher Paige Cooper Reviewed by Yutaka Dirks By Helen Chau Bradley Reviewed by Vanessa Bonneau Mélanie Grondin Editor 19 BDQ Lesley Trites Associate Editor 14 Mélanie Grondin By Licia Canton Edited by Andy Brown David LeBlanc Designer Reviewed by Heather Leighton young readers Michael Wile Advertising Manager, National 15 Elaine Craig 22 Highlights of the season’s books By Erin MacLeod for young people graphic Reviewed by B.A. Markus For editorial inquiries contact: 20 Red Winter AELAQ 1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite #3 fiction By Anneli Furmark Westmount, QC H3Z 1X4 6 Descent into Night Translated by Hanna Strömberg essay By Edem Awumey Reviewed by Eloisa Aquino 23 Salon du livre des Premières Telephone: 514-932-5633 Translated by Phyllis Aronoff Nations in Wendake First Nation Email: [email protected] and Howard Scott By Shannon Webb-Campbell Reviewed by Dean Garlick

For advertising inquiries contact: 7 The Philistine [email protected] By Leila Marshy Reviewed by Danielle Barkley

ISSN # 1480-2538 Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots Copyright 2018, the authors and the AELAQ. By Erín Moure Reviewed by Cora Siré Dépôt légal, Bibliothèque nationale du Québec 8 Blue Lake and the National Library of Canada, By Janet Savage Blachford first quarter, 2018. Reviewed by Rebecca Morris

The Apocalypse of Morgan Turner We wish to thank the Canada Council for the By Jennifer Quist

Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Reviewed by Sarah Lolley and SODEC for their generous support, without which this publication would not exist. poetry 16 The Size of a Bird One-year subscriptions available for $12 By Clementine Morrigan

Please send a cheque payable to the AELAQ. Slow War By Benjamin Hertwig

Opinions expressed in reviews and articles Excitement Tax By John Emil Vincent in the Montreal Review of Books do not Bothism necessarily reflect the views of the editors By Tanya Evanson or the AELAQ. The Chemical Life By Jim Johnstone Visit us online Reviewed by Tess Liem and Marcela Huerta mtlreviewofbooks.ca Our featured illustrator this issue is Nicole Aline Legault . Nicole’s work aelaq.org examines our need to revive our relationship to the natural world and expresses a bond between beauty and the absurd.

Cover photo by Alex Tran

PRINTED IN CANADA The Great Dictators BY JEFF MILLER • PHOTO BY ALEX TRAN

he political turmoil of the Middle East has been the backdrop for much of Dimitri Nasrallah’s T work. He returns to it with a new perspective in his latest novel, The Bleeds . His two previous books explored the legacy of the Lebanese civil war, a conflict that Nasrallah witnessed firsthand. Both his debut, Blackbodying , and second novel, Niko , focus on the intimate “After writing about a child whose write” and that “a lot of pain went experiences of average people navigating corrupt life is altered by war, the greatest into Niko ’s crafting.” For The Bleeds , contrast of that experience would be he wanted to do something different. governments and military violence. In The Bleeds , focusing on the type of person who “I wanted to get outside of myself and however, Nasrallah goes straight to the top, train - controls the war,” Nasrallah tells me, change the process this time around.” explaining the transition in his writing Strongman leaders have long held ing his focus on the leaders who create those condi - from Niko to this latest work. Winner a place in Nasrallah’s imagination. tions. The novel examines a family dynasty of iron- of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fic - “To some degree I’ve always had this fisted dictators with the chillingly apropos surname tion and longlisted for the prestigious kind of persona [in mind], shaping the International IMPAC Dublin Literary events that resulted in me moving so of Bleed, tyrants motivated solely by self-interest Award, Niko charts the epic journey many times as a child,” he says. One and profoundly unconcerned about the citizens of a child displaced by conflict, draw - of the guiding questions of his writing ing from Nasrallah’s own childhood process was “how did they come to they rule. Set in a fictional Middle Eastern dictator - experience fleeing Lebanon. His fam - be so far removed from the people ship on the eve of its own Arab Spring, the novel ily spent time in Kuwait, Dubai, and they affect?” Greece, before finally making their One needs to look no further than represents an important transformation in home in Canada. Nasrallah acknowl - the opening scenes of the novel to find Nasrallah’s fiction. edges that it was “a difficult book to answers to this question. Nasrallah’s

4 dictator perfectly fits the image of the From the reader’s perspective, it is ian regimes are perhaps the most far- post-colonial strongman. Mustafa clear that a lightly fictionalized ver - reaching embodiments of structural Bleed has led the country his father sion of one country’s travails would patriarchy that we have,” Nasrallah founded with an iron fist through not have served this novel. Nasral - observes. Even when facing threats to eight mandates, suppressing the na - lah’s goal isn’t simply to mock one their personal safety for speaking tion’s ethnic minority and lining his dictator, but rather to satirize the idea truth to power, the fierce women in pockets with money from public cof - of the strongman, as well as the inter - this novel persevere in denouncing fers. He is petty, vain, and completely national powers that allowed them to the Bleed regime. “Women do so out of touch with the people he rules. flourish in the post-colonial era, much of the thankless pushing He begins his day in his private heli - whole cloth. A satirical country wor - against the status quo in society,” copter, admiring the landmarks of the thy of Swift, Mahbad gives us a clear- Nasrallah says, and so he knew that capital city. Among them is an enor - eyed view of how dictatorships are “the elements of progress in the novel mous statue of his father in Revolu - Potemkin states, built to impress the needed to be female, as a push to - tion Square, as well as “the Bleed eye of the dictator only, and ulti - ward a wider future for all.” cinemas, the Bleed National Library, mately hollow. Mahbad is a portrait The Bleed regime is destabilized Bleed Stadium.” The country, it of political power gone awry. over the course of the novel, but the would seem, was built in his own The counterweight to the self- prospects for real change in Mahbad image. obsessed myopia of Mustafa and are uncertain at the book’s end. But he is ailing. Following a major Vadim are the fictional news articles Nasrallah believes that reports of the stroke, the octogenarian has handed interspersed throughout the novel’s death of the Middle East dictator over the presidency first-person narra - are greatly exaggerated. “Calls for to his only son, The Bleeds isn’t a mere tives. Articles from change result in chaos, create a power Vadim, a coked-up the state-funded vacuum, which is then readily filled in playboy with zero burlesque of a dictatorship, daily newspaper by more military intervention. … The political instincts. gone rogue and an reality is, in the end, nothing substan - Young and inexperi - but is instead a fierce independent blog tial changed beyond the deepening of enced, Vadim is a political satire with give us a glimpse disillusionment.” As the novel closes, pure narcissist. He of street-level life only one thing is certain: that laugh - has little interest in real teeth. in the capital. The ing in the face of dictators offers a his native country decision to include brief consolation from the horror of or the monuments these fictional arti - their crimes. mRb that bear his family name. We first cles and to set them apart on the encounter him riding home in his page, mimicking newspaper design Jeff Miller is the author of the short story limousine after voting for himself in features such as mastheads and collection Ghost Pine: All Stories True . yet another rigged election. Instead of columns, emerged early in Nasrallah’s looking forward to his next mandate, creative process. They allowed him to Vadim retreats into his memories, re - create what he calls “a different kind living his glory days as a race car of novel, one actively engaged with driver on the Formula One circuit. the larger cultural phenomenon of Confident that his father is arranging using language to actively shape … his victory, the thought of losing the the world.” When Mustafa delays election never crosses his mind. announcing the election results, these The Bleeds isn’t a mere burlesque news sources capture the people’s of a dictatorship, but is instead a outrage at his flagrant abuse of fierce political satire with real teeth. It power. After Vadim leaves the coun - has bite because, as clueless as they try on a wild goose chase, the media might be, Mustafa and Vadim are reports on the activist movement fully realized characters, and the ram - taking to the streets of the capital ifications of their callous actions al - and being brutally suppressed by THE BLEEDS ways have consequences for them and the regime. Dimitri Nasrallah for their country. “We tend to simmer While there are almost no women Esplanade Books satire down to its basic ability to in the Bleed camp, all of the novel’s $19.95, paper, 244pp mimic and make fun,” Nasrallah ob - crusading journalists and opposition 9781550654806 serves. But instead, he believes, it is politicians are women. “Authoritar - “the most political of all the genres – the only form that grants an individ - ual the necessary cynicism to com - ment upon the political world.” Essential to the success of this satire is Nasrallah’s remarkable liter - ary world-building. The fictional country of Mahbad is a former British colony turned client state of the Americans, who mine the nation’s plentiful uranium deposits. Unequally divided between warring ethnic groups, the nation feels unnervingly real. Nasrallah, a keen observer of global politics, cites events in the re - cent history of Iran, Zimbabwe, and Lebanon as informing his invented country, but for The Bleeds he didn’t want to be beholden to real people and histories. Moreover, for Nasrallah, “to set the story in one of these places would seem like a low form of ideological tourism.” JULIE ARTACHO fiction An Antidote to Hope

DESCENT INTO NIGHT Edem Awumey Translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott Mawenzi House $20.95, paper, 160pp 9781988449166

ou may be looking for a bit of literary escapism to lighten the depths of winter, a “fun romp” to distract from the drag. I can say with confidence that Edem Awumey’s Descent into Night does not fit that category. However, if you seek something hYarrowing and suffused with poetic elegance, this may be the book for you. With a sensual realism that at times bleeds into fantasy, Awumey lays before us the life of West African playwright Ito Baraka. Shifts in tense and voice mark the separation between Ito’s existence in Hull, Quebec, and his deeply tragic past. Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott have done an exceptional job translat - ing Awumey’s prose, maintaining a style that is lyrical, yet never overwrought. Cruelty, degradation, betrayal, regret, grief, and self-pity are just words. But This is a novel of emotional complexity, of what it means to survive through Edem Awumey shows us the ways these abstractions can live and breathe in the trauma, and the repercussions of that survival. bones, blood, and mind of a person, in time poisoning every aspect of their Ito returns to Hull from a reading in Quebec City and scribbles feverishly in existence. If all of this seems a bit heavy, I can assure you that it is. But there’s his notebook, recounting a previous life in an unnamed West African capital an undeniable power pulsing through this novel that rewards those who can see

city. In his student days, idealistic and naive, he discovered a faith in the power beyond suffering and find beauty. mRb of literature to incite real change in the world. While journalists were being gunned down in the streets, Ito and his friends were “dreaming with eyes Dean Garlick is a fiction writer living in Montreal. His novella Chloes launched in the open,” envisioning the shape of the country to come. Surely, a series of flyers spring of 2014 , and a French translation of his first novel, The Fish , was published by using quotes from Beckett’s Endgame would more effectively express the absur - Les Allusifs in the fall of 2015 . He is currently working on a new novel. dity of the political climate than run-of-the-mill sloganeering. And though they knew they were poking the monster with a stick, youthful hubris didn’t allow them to see This is a novel of emotional their powerlessness, the riots complexity, of what it means that would devour an entire to survive through trauma, city, or the victims – Ito includ - ed – who would arbitrarily be and the repercussions of swept up and taken away. The that survival. Ito of the present is burdened by the yoke of guilt, dying slowly of alcoholism and leukemia, “playacting at a normal life” with his equally troubled girlfriend, Kimi. And though writing his story resurrects the horned beast that fed on him and those he loved, Ito is compelled to put it onto the page as an act of both redemption and surrender. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this novel is Ito’s love for his blind prison camp cellmate, Koli Lem. Koli the fallen oracle, to whom Ito reads by lamplight, reigniting his passion for the written word. Koli, to whom Ito made love because his beautiful body was “the picture of dignity and noble bearing.” Koli, who risked everything to help Ito escape, who warned him that once he got out, “the people who don’t go crazy are the ones who make music or books.” Ito would spend years after the camp pursuing Koli’s shadow, finding him in a Malian street hawker or a Parisian busker, talking deep into the night with him, deceiving himself about his presence in order to spend just a little more time with him. And while writing would become Ito’s obsession, a way to move forward and his ticket out of the country, it would also be the thing that isolates him from the love of a family and leaves him shivering through the Quebec winters in a musty basement apartment.

Read more book reviews on the mRb blog mtlreviewofbooks.ca/blog

6 fiction The Shifting Self Shine on Me, Little Star

KARIS SHEARER THE PHILISTINE SITTING SHIVA ON MINTO AVENUE, Leila Marshy BY TOOTS Linda Leith Publishing Erín Moure $18.95, paper, 320pp New Star Books 9781988130705 $21.00, paper, 160pp 9781554201419 arly in Leila Marshy’s novel hen an intrepid explorer of E The Philistine , the language and thought sits protagonist, Nadia, W down to shine light on the abruptly declines to board nature of memory and grief, you sus - a return flight from Egypt pect you’re in for an extraordinary to Canada and arranges voyage. In this intricately layered instead for an open-ended book, a cross-genre narrative encom - ticket allowing her to stay passing memoir, biography, goodbye indefinitely. What looks at letter, and poetic socio-historic first glance like a refusal treatise stretching from Vancouver to to go home becomes far Montreal, Erín Moure reminds us that more ambiguous because memory transcends mortality, that in of how the novel unsettles our rawest grief, love and reflection hood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce back the categories of home can offer the greatest shelters. The dis - when the streetcar ran from pre- and away, travelling and claimer upfront avows that “memory expressway Décarie all the way up to arriving, belonging and is a work of the imagination.” Moure, Belmont Park, an amusement park and exile. Marshy deftly author of two dozen books, including local landmark that – like the deceased explores how moving between places always means many poetry collections, delivers an – no longer exists, except in memory. moving between different versions of one’s self, artful feat of the imaginary anchored In this book, the very act of including versions that may seem unrecognizable. in truth and authenticity. remembering, moving back and forth Nadia is the daughter of a Palestinian father and Beginning with the through time and geography, Canadian mother, born and raised in Montreal, but with her worldview and title, Moure introduces lends an immediacy and believ - identity intensely interwoven with her Middle Eastern heritage. When her elements of mystery and ability to the narrative. The father abruptly returns to Egypt, leaving her and her mother behind, Nadia intrigue. Most of us reader feels present, sitting is left with gaping questions that she finally seeks to answer, five years later, know that sitting shiva shiva at the narrator’s side in by planning an impulsive trip to Cairo to seek him out. The initially short refers to the Jewish tra - Montreal as she reveals the duration of the trip is extended because of two complicating factors: her dition of mourning over characters and emotional tex - father’s reticence to welcome her into his new life and the start of a love a seven-day period dur - ture of their story while explor - affair between Nadia and Manal, a young Egyptian woman with aspirations ing which the bereaved ing all manner of ideas and rele - of studying art abroad. When Nadia decides not to board her flight, she is does not leave the house. vant facts, meticulously driven by multiple intersecting forms of desire: desire for Manal, desire for But where is Minto researched and sourced, on his - a deeper relationship with her father, and desire for an understanding of her Avenue and who on torical events and philosophical own Palestinian identity. As she comes to understand during the time she earth (or in heaven) is questions, on sites like Belmont spends in Egypt, “we are always travelling towards something … and it was Toots? All we know at the outset is Park, and on restaurants and buildings more often than not the past.” the one clue given on the book’s back in Vancouver and Montreal, to con - Marshy’s style gives a lyrical but keen-eyed representation of a collision cover: “No one alive now knows firm and authenticate her memories with a culture, language, and history that is both totally outside of Nadia’s who Toots is.” Among the pleasures of scenes such as this one: expectations and at the same time achingly familiar. Readers are similarly left of reading the book is the process of to navigate the gap between the Egypt of popular imagination and a tense discovery and revelation related to In the Gasthouse on Robson Street but vividly alive city. The Nile and the pyramids appear in the novel, but the characters and their settings. west of Burrard, we’d eat big mostly in juxtaposition to Nadia’s at first ambivalent, and then increasingly Early on, the narrator draws us schnitzels and drink Blue Nun appreciative, response to the urban contradictions of life in Cairo. As she into the story as we learn she’s just wine. One night we left the restau - muses: “a city of sixteen million and yet she’d never felt safer. More received the phone call that nobody rant and he was very drunk and harassed, yes, but safer too. And, strangely, seen.” This multiplicity is rein - ever wants to receive. The caller stopped in the street and looked forced by the play of languages threaded throughout the text: French, informs her of the death of a friend up at a streetlight and thought it English, and Arabic. At a pivotal moment early in their courtship, Nadia she once loved and who loved her was the sun and said what he used speaks to Manal in French and then reflects: “Another language was needed, back. Paul Émile Savard, born in 1943 , to say to the sun: Shine on me, another lexicon that wouldn’t, for the moment at least, know what it was died in December 2015 , alone in a little star. doing.” The vocabulary characters have available to them becomes another Vancouver hospital. From the moment I still do that to streetlights in way to categorize what is foreign and what is familiar as those categories she receives the call, the narrator his honour. Shine on me, little star. become increasingly intertwined. embraces the act of remembrance, Refreshingly, Nadia’s relationship with Manal blends seamlessly as one excavating memory and exposing The specificity of such moments theme among many in a narrative focused on growth, exploration, and the her grief. reflects the nature of memory, how navigation of identity. Nadia’s recognition that her sexuality is more fluid For seven days straight, the struc - thinking back to the times spent with than she had previously understood reinforces that perhaps everything about tural timeline of the book, she delves the little man during the seventies con - her is likewise mutable. Marshy’s controlled prose underscores this complexi - into her past relationship with a per - jures details that yield further details ty: “‘I guess I’ll stay in Cairo as long as it takes.’ Then [Nadia] added, realiz - son she affectionately calls “the little to create a portrait that clarifies before ing it could be anything: ‘Whatever it is.’” The beauty of The Philistine is the man,” retrieving her memories of our eyes, enriched by recurring images novel’s ability to recognize and celebrate journeying across places and into meals and conversations shared, good and metaphors written with the preci - one’s self, even when the destination is perpetually shifting. mRb and bad moments lived, and the signif - sion and instincts of a poet. mRb icance of his seventy-two-year lifespan. Danielle Barkley holds a PhD from the Department of English at McGill University. Born in Quebec into a family whose Cora Siré is the author of three books. Her She has taught writing, rhetoric, and critical analysis, and currently works as a struggles expose the failed policies of latest novel, Behold Things Beautiful , was graduate career educator at the University of British Columbia. church and state, Paul Émile Savard a finalist for QWF’s Paragraphe Hugh grew up in the Montreal neighbour - MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2017 .

7 fiction

mother dies, he is stunned to discover Everyone watches everyone else as they Blachford’s novel. Several subplots Laurentian that she has cut him out of her will. set off on personal quests towards self- seem to evaporate midway through the Instead, she has left the cottage to his realization. story and some characters are sketched estranged ex-wife, Béa, who fled the This is a book where setting is too thinly, never quite coming to life. Legacy marriage and the country after the more important than plot, and As a whole, Blue Lake succeeds as drowning of their toddler son, Blachford’s glowing prose animates her a poetic meditation, a figurative pil - BLUE LAKE Minnow. descriptions of Blue Lake. Each season grimage rather than a plot-driven Janet Savage Blachford Determined to reclaim his birthright is beautifully depicted, with “iced-up novel, transplanting themes of life and John Aylen Books and confront his past, Ted returns to bushes and trees sparkled in tiny death, guilt and luck, time and inheri -

$24.99, paper, 229pp Blue Lake for the first time in years. shakes of air, rattling like bird bones” tance into the hinterlands of Quebec. mRb 9780995334113 Despite his concern about whether it in winter, a springtime field of blue will be “fair or even possible to layer flowers “burning as blue as cognac on Rebecca Morris is a Montreal writer. Her n Blue Lake , Janet Savage their lives over the scrim of the earlier plum pudding,” and finally summer, short story “Foreign Bodies” won the 2017 Blachford has written a poem in one with Béa and Minnow,” Ted con - when plants, like children, begin Malahat Review Open Season Award and I the shape of a novel, anchoring her vinces his wife Caely and their teenage “pulling away from their nurturing she is currently working on a novel. Visit story within a vivid and son Rob to leave their com - roots.” her at rebeccamorris.ca. magical Laurentian setting. fortable life in Vancouver and Interwoven with the daily lives of

Blue Lake is a place spend a whole summer at Ted’s family and neighbours are ele - BRYAN DEMCHINSKY where the land belongs to the lake. ments of magical realism. Characters everyone, where people Over the course of this speak in the language of legend and “considered need or want summer, each character devel - allegory, dropping allusions to Celtic more significant than own - ops their own obsessions: and Egyptian mythology as well as the ership.” In Blue Lake , his - Rob relives his father’s youth - Garden of Eden, Prospero’s island tory and tragedy threaten to ful fixation with canoes and from The Tempest , and the classic repeat themselves in each the Franklin expedition, while French-Canadian flying canoe generation, with each char - his mother Caely designs a described in La Chasse-galerie . The acter “doubled and shad - fanciful rock garden, com - symbolism is particularly noticeable owed by past, present and future.” In plete with a theatre and a plexiglass with the book’s animal life, from the this community, it’s considered perfect - pyramid. Ted, meanwhile, roams the pet dog who is repeatedly mistaken for ly reasonable to camouflage your cabin lake, brooding over his past and trying a bear to the wildlife living alongside with paintings of trees or to cultivate a to make decisions about his future. Ted the people at Blue Lake: a dying baby garden of poisonous plants, fertilized and his family are gradually absorbed moose, an unpredictable black bear, The Montreal Review with the ashes of family and friends. into the Blue Lake community, inter - and a shadowy lynx. of Books was sad to learn The story focuses on Ted Gault, a acting with a varied cast of neighbours At times, the narrative falters under of the passing of Janet middle-aged literature professor whose who include a precocious preteen the burden of these double meanings, Savage Blachford family has owned a cottage on Blue tomboy, an enigmatic hunter, an artis - leaving the reader bewildered by the on February 12, 2018. Lake for generations. When Ted’s tic divorcée, and an ancient matriarch. dream-like logic that animates

when things are going wrong is There is sensitivity and lyricism Hedunit. something he does for money,” the in Jennifer Quist’s writing. There are victim’s brother, Tod, says sardon - keen observations and scenes of Now what? ically of his father. “He’s a crisis exquisite compassion, particularly the gigolo.”) Tod carries on much as he ones that involve Morgan’s interac - did before. Or so it seems. In the pri - tions with her unexpected new social THE APOCALYPSE OF vacy of his bedroom where no one circle of Korean-soap-opera-loving MORGAN TURNER can see, he stops using the sleep Chinese immigrants. There is grim Jennifer Quist apnea machine that safeguards his humour, too. In the courtroom, Tod Linda Leith Publishing life every night when he closes refers to the half of the gallery behind $18.95, paper, 300pp his eyes. the prosecutor’s desk where they sit 9781988130620 And then there is Morgan Turner, as “the bride’s side.” When Morgan’s the victim’s younger sister and the anxious fingers wander to the bottom rom the first page of Jennifer title character of the book, who is of the bench, she finds that “someone Quist’s new novel, we know poor and poorly educated, intensely has left a wad of gum as a protest, F who the murderer is. private, and has no friends other sticking it to the court system the best “These events were not ran - than her brother. As the months be - way they could.” dom and there is currently tween Brett Finnemore’s arrest and Readers wanting a fast-paced no threat to public safety,” a the start of his trial drag on past a whodunit should look elsewhere. The police spokesperson says in a year, Morgan struggles to make some Apocalypse of Morgan Turner is for prepared statement. Brett sense of what happened to her sister. those seeking something graver and Finnemore, the victim’s mur - behind, the family of the She takes a job at the local abattoir, richer, more nuanced and thought- derous boyfriend, has been murdered woman, as they seeking “a proper horror movie—one provoking, something with no easy caught and charged, and is struggle to find a way to with a storyline she can watch unfold - ending, however the verdict comes awaiting his day in court. live in the lengthy purgato - ing with a beginning, a middle, and back. They will leave it feeling, as So now what do we do? ry between the murderer’s someday maybe, an end.” She puzzles Morgan did after finally seeing the What do we do in a arrest and his conviction. over whether exorcism and the devil inside of the abattoir, “like any new crime novel where there is Grief has changed them and holy water are real and if so, initiate, considering something that no hard-boiled detective working the in different ways. The victim’s mother, what they look like. She becomes was much less and much more than

case? No tenacious cop playing cat- Sheila, burning with fury, has become friends with a man whose schizophre - expected, all at once.” mRb and-mouse with the killer, no small- “a sound-bite machine for outrage at nia makes it impossible for him to town spinster shrewdly putting the criminal justice system.” Her ex- keep his life together – an interesting Sarah Lolley is a Montreal-based author, together clues? What do we do when husband Marc, the victim’s father, has counterpoint to the fact that Brett essayist, medical writer, and cryptic cross - we walk into the story after the thrill gone in the opposite direction, preach - Finnemore, the killer, is putting for - word setter. She blogs about the latter at of the chase? ing solace and serenity and forgiveness ward a defence of Not Criminally www.sarahlolley.com. In The Apocalypse of Morgan on a speaking circuit and in his new Responsible by reason of a mental Turner , we sit with the people left self-published book. (“Being nice disorder.

8 By Abby Paige

Susan Elmslie Lashing and Balm

MUSEUM OF KINDNESS Susan Elmslie Brick Books $20.00, paper, 113pp question from a friend was the catalyst 9781771314671 for Museum of Kindness , Susan Elmslie’s latest book of poems. “She asked me, ‘What’s A your genre?’” the poet recounts, “And she meant, essentially, what metaphor speaks to where you are in your life right now?”

With Museum of Kindness , her second poetry ting suicide. This portion of the book moves narra - diminishes in retrospect as it is assimilated into the collection, Elmslie responds to that question and ex - tively, from the event itself to its immediate aftermath larger, ordered arc of a life, into which other traumas plores how we find the metaphors we need to make to its recollection in retrospect. It opens with “School present themselves for comparison. sense of lived experience. In a generous, extended Shooting,” its stanzas in couplets like the barrels of a The subsequent section of poems, entitled email correspondence, Elmslie told me about her gun and lines that seem to have broken under tension: “Threshold,” follows a similar narrative arc from approach and expanded on her notion of “genre.” chaos to order. Beginning with a difficult pregnancy “How does a genre become a genre?” she won - I can tell you there is a static silence and birth, the poems trace a child’s diagnosis (“My ders. “How do the contours of the thing, the experi - between reports of a gun; bullets baby’s perfect but his brain won’t let him talk,” ence that we confront, take shape, until the moans the voice of “Broken Baby Blues”) and his par - phenomenon can be recognized and named in a word pierce drywall; we were too afraid to move ents’ struggle to find footing on the steep slope of or phrase that encapsulates its gestures and conven - a filing cabinet to block the door; their new reality. Here, too, Elmslie draws from per - tions? Holocaust. Active Shooter. Fetal Abduction. sonal experience, that of parenting two small children, These terms came after the phenomena.” when the smooth-jawed SWAT officer the younger of whom has autism. These poems walk a Many of Elmslie’s poems chart the course from ordered me to hold it open for my students more delicate line of self-exposure. While the “ges - raw experience to more serene understanding, even tures and conventions” of a school shooting are famil - epiphany. “At least you got a poem out of it,” quips then swung around to cover my back I felt iar to most of North America by now, these poems the speaker of “Material,” suggesting the fraught rela - his core hot and trembling through Kevlar. describe a more obscure “genre,” the experience of tionship between the moments we live and the stories loving and caring for a child with a disability: the we tell about them. A poem is “one of the perks of The poem feels utterly controlled and unflinching, initial, disorienting grief; the grinding exhaustion; pain,” the only consolation for the “endless supply of even as trauma radiates heat from underneath. It is a the scrutiny of doctors and well-meaning strangers; material” life unfailingly supplies. recollection broken into short breaths, the reality of the harrowing uncertainty about the future. From Much of the material from which Elmslie draws is the experience accumulating, snowflakes into snow, as “Going Under”: personal, although she, like many poets who write in images land one by one. Elmslie often operates this a similar vein, puts quotes around the descriptor way: a careful accounting of images, sensations, and Infant , from the Latin for unable to speak . “confessional.” “Poetry’s still artifice, even if it does ordinary moments that coalesce into a sum more At five and nonverbal, our boy’s still golden. intersect with lived experience in significant ways.” meaningful than its parts. The effect can be satisfy - People like to say, No one ever goes to college in To call these poems “confessional” is to say that ingly surprising, but it is a premeditated kind of sur - diapers. they mine the poet’s interior, but it is not to say only prise, like someone appearing in a doorway before that. As poet Rachel Zucker has said, “surgery is you hear their footsteps. These poems feel resolutely truthful, yet appropri - not an act of intimacy.” A poem is not made by self- “I can spend years on revisions, approaching the ately protective. Elmslie never lets it all hang out; she exposure alone. Rather, these poems explore and poem totally coldly,” Elmslie reflects. “And then sud - is aware of the stakes of revelation. sometimes undermine the boundaries of the self, denly click or sproing . I feel a sense of ‘yes, that’s it,’ “These poems, to some degree, put me out in the scraping down private experience until something when a poem coalesces and there’s a match between world as a mother of a child who is differently abled, more human (perhaps “generic”) than individual what gets down on the page and what I didn’t know I who is different,” she acknowledges with a tinge of is revealed. knew about my subject or experience … As Frost dread. “Some people may be curious. Some people With the book’s second section, entitled “Trigger said, ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No will turn away. And some people will see their own Warning,” Elmslie explores one of the grimmest ex - surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.’” experiences reflected. I expect that there will be judge - amples of how a specific event, particular and even The aim of reworking poems over such a long pe - ment. There may also be connection, an opening.” anomalous when first experienced, is codified by repe - riod – Museum of Kindness “came together over The “confessional” core of the book is bookended tition into a genre; here she pioneers the sub-genre of eleven years,” Elmslie says – is to depersonalize the by poems that explore less loaded themes, giving the the school-shooting poem. (American poet Bob Hicok, material and evaluate it more dispassionately. Interest - collection an arc of its own, a course plotted into who provides epigraphs to two of the poems, is an - ingly, the poems often embody such shifts our percep - darkness, but then methodically back out again. other such pioneer.) Elmslie teaches English at Daw - tion takes over time. The section related to the Many individual poems chart similar journeys, the son College, and she was teaching there in September Dawson shooting closes with “The Worst,” which 2006 when a gunman attacked the school, killing one asks, “How do we get a handle on the worst / when student and wounding nineteen others before commit - it’s a moving target”? The horror of the incident Continued on page 17

9 ADAM MICHIELS

By Helen Chau Bradley

ZOLITUDE Paige Cooper Biblioasis Paige Cooper $19.95, paper, 248pp 9781771962179 World-Blocking and Writing Monstrous Men

ontreal writer Paige Cooper grew up in Canmore, Alberta, a tourist town, so avoidant time-machine inventor in “Thanatos” admits: she learned from a young age to dislike tourists, but also to recognize the “I have no money, but all of my cruelty is intact.” Monstrous men are abundantly present in this col - tourist in herself when she eventually moved away. This awareness gives her lection. Cooper plays with the tension of representing writing an expansive quality, no matter whether her stories are set in her gendered ugliness and violence by getting so close to it M that the reader is uncomfortable with the implications hometown, in Latvia, or on Mars. Zolitude is Cooper’s first short story collection, but it of this proximity. “I am fascinated by how compelled I reads like the work of a far more seasoned writer. Her stories are painful and wise, ugly and am by men and the power that they hold, and that leads moving, and at their best, reveal uncomfortable truths about human connection and its lim - me to question my complicity in that power dynamic,” its. We meet up on a sunny January day at Dispatch Coffee in Little Italy, where, over the Cooper tells me. She references Evan, the protagonist of “Retirement” – a one-time Olympic champion who has industrial thrum, we discuss ugly emotions, playing with genre, world-building versus descended into self-pity, blaming and mistreating all the world-blocking, and writing monstrous men. women in his life. “He sees himself as the victim. My current suspicion, especially with the Time’s Up move - ment happening at the moment, is that most of the Zolitude is startling in its range and scope. It’s not a put forth by Tyler Malone in the Los Angeles Review men who have abused women see themselves as victims, themed collection, but Cooper’s ultimate aim is present of Books . “World-blocking is an alternative to world- explicitly now that they are being called out but maybe throughout and serves to unify: “I’m often writing building,” Cooper explains. “It’s more about the inter - even when they were committing the acts themselves. I towards an emotion,” she tells me. “I’m trying to pin - face between the mind and the physical world; it’s want to examine and peel that back, look at the self- point the constructed world and the dynamics and aes - about obscurity, a certain fogginess. Only so much can pity that’s involved, the misery of that.” thetics that will lead to a certain feeling.” The emotions be known by a person at a given time, so the writer In “Record of Working,” Cooper reimagines Jack that result are neither simple nor comforting. “The presents only a certain amount of detail, and the reader Parsons, who was the head of the Jet Propulsion Lab uglier the emotion, or the more complex, the more is left to fill in the gaps.” at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in revealing it is,” Cooper says. Having decided during The work we are required to do in this collection the 1970 s, and also led a pagan sex cult that gave rise her BFA in Creative Writing that she did not want to is welcome, ultimately, because of the generosity of to Scientology. The rambling occultist screeds of the write auto-fiction – though she admires those who Cooper’s language. She is just as adept at imbuing old Parsons-esque character are driven by a deep misogyny choose to lay themselves bare in that way – she instead myths with new life as she is at spinning descriptions and provide a twisted justification for the abuse that writes in a diversity of voices, across and through an of objects and processes into refractive poetry. In happens in the research facility. Cooper struggles with array of genres. “Moriah,” I am spellbound by this passage about the political implications of writing about these men: I ask her where she finds inspiration, if her stories the roc’s offspring: “I’ve either been really hard on the male narrators, or are not plucked from her own biography, and she para - not hard enough, and I have no idea which it is. You phrases the painter Agnes Martin: “It’s important to, in Her diamond egg, white enough to fall through, can’t absolve yourself of responsibility for the politics almost a childlike way, sit around and wait for a mo - bright enough to snowblind, filled with an evil and of a story and how it may be read; but I feel like litera - ment of surprise. You pay attention to everything, and naked creature that breathed warmly through its ture is the place to ask these questions about power.” wait for that one idea that seizes you. If you’re lucky, shell, utterly beloved. When all else fails, Cooper is tempted to move away you get seized by two ideas at once, and though they from narrative altogether. The last story in the collec - may not immediately make sense together, you use that In “La Folie,” the narrator describes her mode of tion, “Vazova on Love,” is brief and sharp in its yearn - friction to generate a story.” Cooper uses this friction to transport – her frustration is palpable but the image is ing, and barely structured. It is told by a spy who falls great effect. In “Spiderhole,” a smug white Vietnam vet - strangely gorgeous: “Her motorbike, she knows now, in love with her target, and reads like an echo of Anne eran rails against dinosaur tourism in Southeast Asia, is not even a Honda, but a knock-off from China. The Carson’s Short Talks . In a section titled “Autobio - but is unable to recognize his own colonial attitudes cube with aortic valves is a carburetor. The fingerling graphy,” the spy reveals herself: “Yes, I have walked towards his surroundings; in “Moriah,” justice for sex in the wheel well is a spark plug … the gas must be into unlocked rooms and executed the men who waited offenders comes in the ancient form of a roc. choked via a toggle deep in the beast’s phlegmatic for me there. I have soothed evil in its night terrors. I Some of this generative friction comes from chest.” Animals and their likenesses prowl the pages, abase myself. I beg you. Lead pours from my mouth. Cooper’s flexible approach to genre. She was an avid adding to the tone of myth, without ever tipping the My project is reconciliation.” reader of fantasy and science fiction as a child, and, stories into the actual realm of fable. Their appearances A few stories – “Slave Craton,” “The Roar,” though not a fantasy or science fiction writer herself, are just brief and odd enough, natural yet inexplicable. “Thanatos” – don’t land quite as well as the rest; the she boldly experiments with elements of myth, occult A character’s pet snake is a “living noose with a yearn - sinuous drive of the other stories gets mired somewhat horror, space exploration, spy thriller, and adventure ing knob of brain at the end.” The audience at a frenet - in confusing chronology, or a lack of tension. Overall, tales, all of it infused with her own poetic rhythm. ic concert is “shrieking like a bat colony.” The young though, Cooper is a master of balancing reader disori - Her influences range from Jack London to Angela sex workers taken in by a house mother in “The Tin entation with the heady thrill of the unknown. With Carter and Steven Millhauser, to Kathy Acker and Luck” are “an undersea pack of beaks and long arms each opening paragraph, she pitches us into a new Ottessa Moshfegh. … They devour whole nights at a time and spit out atmosphere, full of gorgeous detail and emotional The stories in Zolitude are both unforgiving and the unpalatable survivors.” rawness, a world that feels too real to be a fantasy, generous. Each one drops the reader into the churning There is harshness to the stories as well. These are or perhaps just fantastic enough to be real. mRb centre of things, with little explanation; we are provid - not tales of success or enlightenment – characters are ed with snippets of conversation and sensation, and often doomed to failure, accidents, misplaced love, and Helen Chau Bradley is a former bookseller. She works at must work to get our bearings. Cooper admits that the regret. They wrestle with their own shortcomings. A POP Montreal and plays in the band Heathers. For her lack of clarifying detail baffles some readers, but she character in one story laments that, “there are some tiny book reviews and reading recommendations, follow subscribes to the concept of “world-blocking” recently symptoms of himself that are hard to hide.” The death- @notesofacrocodile on Instagram.

TERRENCE BYRNES

By Licia Canton

Mélanie Grondin Rediscovered Art

uido Nincheri is recognized as the most prolific Montreal artist of stained-glass windows and frescoes, but it was not his intention to settle in Montreal when he arrived with his bride in 1913 . The newlyweds were originally headed to South GAmerica when the possibility of war in Europe changed their plans. The artist is most often cited for his fresco depicting Mussolini in the apse of the Madonna della Difesa Church in Little Italy, a work that caused the Nincheri family much grief during World War II. In The Art and Passion of Guido Nincheri , biographer Mélanie Grondin describes the artist in various phases of his personal and professional life. She examines Nincheri’s artwork, in Canada and the United States, in great detail and includes thirty-two colour plates of his art.

Grondin, a translator and the editor of the Montreal Review of Books , has also published short fiction and poetry. She has spent the last seven years immersed in Guido Nincheri’s world, becoming well versed in his artistic production. I recently spoke with Mélanie Grondin about her passion for the artist and the making of her book.

Licia Canton: The Art and Passion of Guido Nincheri is written with enthu - siasm and tenderness. It was a very pleasant read. I really appreciate the amount of detail in the descriptions of Nincheri’s artwork. It’s evident that this was an enormous project and that you’ve done a lot of research. You took Italian-language, Renaissance art, and stained-glass window classes to better understand Guido Nincheri’s world. You visited numerous churches and buildings to see Nincheri’s art, and you’ve walked USED BOOK SALE the streets of Florence to better imagine his years as a student. How Saturday April 7 did you decide to take on such a huge project? and Sunday April 8 Mélanie Grondin: In a way, I felt as though I had no choice. I first discov - 10 am to 5 pm ered Guido Nincheri by hanging out with the Nincheri family – the artist’s great-granddaughter is a high school friend of my husband and a dear friend of mine – and the more I found out about him, the more I wanted to bring him to light. I felt a book was needed, but nobody else was writing it, so it had to be me. The desire to write a book about Nincheri took hold of me and didn’t let go. It was a huge project, but it only feels so in hindsight. When I was in the middle of it, it was great fun because it

Continued on page 17

14 By Erin MacLeod

Elaine Craig More than a Trial: The Canadian Justice System and Sexual Assault

once charged someone with sexual assault: a man grabbed my breasts Marie Heinen’s discussion of this style of lawyering was brought to light by the media at the time of the and then raised his fist to punch me as my friends pulled him away. I Ghomeshi trial. Craig takes great pains to suggest was nineteen and it was at a university party. The cops were called, and that though Heinen was seen as encouraging the use of “whacking” in a video circulated online, this is one of the things that sticks out in my memories of that evening is a not necessarily borne out in Heinen’s courtroom police officer saying to me, “This happens so often, but so few women style. Whacking is also not very effective in terms of accessing the truth and can thus limit the ability Ilay charges; please do this.” My experience encapsulates two facts underlined to uncover legitimate information on both sides. Craig is not calling for an all-out destruction of in Elaine Craig’s thorough Putting Trials on Trial: Sexual Assault and the the system; rather, her very commitment to it means Failure of the Legal Profession : those who experience sexual assault are over - that she focuses on the rights of all parties. The accused has no right to a “discriminatory defence,” whelmingly female, and only a small fraction of women end up taking the she writes, and calls for “clear ethical obligations accused assailant to court. I did, and it was not a positive experience. on defence counsel.” But the failure of the Crown is taken as seriously as the problems of the defence. Recognizing that the role of the Crown is to seek a fair trial over everything else – according to the Reading Craig’s book, it appears that I am not called “rape shield” section of the Canadian Model Code of Professional Conduct from the alone. The legal system in Canada is stacked against Criminal Code. These myths are quite clear: first, Federation of Law Societies of Canada – there is justice for sexual assault survivors in a range of that “women who are sexually active are less a responsibility that lies on their side as well. ways. But this book, though quite trustworthy,” and second, that I felt like I was reading about myself when scathing, is also constructive. It “women with sexual experience are Craig talked about how so many complainants develops an argument for reform of more likely to have consented to have a lack of familiarity with the rituals of the the present ways sexual assault is the sex at issue in the allegation.” court system and do not realize that the Crown is treated. Trials seem to be beset by Craig goes on to demonstrate not their lawyer. The complainant is a witness for a range of different rules, regula - and provide shocking examples of the Crown, and therefore needs to have some level tions, and traditions: the public, how the defence, the Crown, and of preparation. Craig underlines a need for special - whether complainant or accused, the judiciary are all responsible for ized education to avoid the risk of coaching a requires counsel to navigate the reinforcing these beliefs, as well as witness, what she calls a “trauma-informed process. But Craig demystifies this creating and maintaining a trial approach,” and resources that would provide process and, in doing so, is able to environment that seems to leave lit - independent legal advice for complainants. Judges, win over the reader as a supporter tle room for fairness to come into according to Craig, also need to “humanize the of what becomes an obvious, essen - play. Invoking the two myths to courtroom setting.” The physical set-up of the tial, and very possible reform that question complainants’ credibility is court can impact the ability to achieve a fair trial. would help create a far more fair PUTTING TRIALS ON TRIAL an unfortunate pattern that disrupts The idea that complainants must stand without and just situation for all parties in Sexual Assault and the Failure the nature of the trial – the actual break seems extreme. Even the imagery of the the courtroom and society at large. of the Legal Profession purpose of finding out the truth of court – how it underlines the white, Western, male, Though it is written as instruc - Elaine Craig what happened. It actually veils colonial history of the judiciary rather than the tions for those working within the McGill-Queen’s University Press the truth. reality of the diversity of Canada and First Nations system, it is by no means limited to $34.95, cloth, 320pp Craig agrees that the defence experience – will have an impact on complainants that audience. Putting Trials on 9780773552777 must be an advocate for the who do not reflect that history. Trial provides a readable, though accused, but maintains that they Facing this, Craig calls for what reads like basic oftentimes disturbing, look at the should not resort to being unethical civility. “Compassion and intervention” are her Canadian criminal justice system’s problematic in order to be a strong advocate. She describes how terms: she wants judges to protect the process as treatment of sexual assault. For a society rife with cross-examination in preliminary trials can be used well as the complainant and make sure that this criminal procedural television shows and films deal - in the interest of preventing the complainant from civility is not biasing the trial. Of course, “trial ing with these types of crimes, this insider exposé continuing with the process, and enumerates a num - judges must balance the duty to intervene with the makes for gripping material. Beginning with a ber of occurrences where defence lawyers advertise need to ensure that the accused’s right to a thorough description of the context and commentary sur - their abilities to silence complainants on firm cross-examination is not unduly compromised.” But rounding sexual assault trials, Craig immediately websites. Craig acknowledges the occurrence of this means stopping irrelevant, badgering questions, discusses what is commonly referred to as the “twin so-called whacking of the complainant, defined as myths” about rape, which are reflected in the so- aggressive questioning meant to disturb and distress; Continued on page 17

15 poetry

THE SIZE OF A BIRD which it is precarious amid relentless metamorphosis must have been a be read aloud. And yet there is a soft Clementine Morrigan men, masculinity, and trauma frames soldier with his legs introspection to them; solitude hides Inanna Publications this book. In “Mountains on the blown off. How else could he hate in plain sight, but Evanson is never $18.95, paper, 102pp Moon,” they write, “I think I need himself so much? (TL) locking us out. Rather, she invites us 9781771334570 his approval. I’m not even sure I like to the festivities. him.” With extraordinary clarity, n Excitement Tax , John Emil Vin - Luscious images are pulled one SLOW WAR Morrigan explores how this cognitive cent has written a collection of after the next from a bottomless bas - Benjamin Hertwig dissonance, the desire to please men I prose poems with complex skele - ket of beauty, and force us to reflect McGill-Queen’s University Press who harm, is learned and reinforced, tons, each phrase connected to its on the bounty of the Earth, its deli - $16.95, paper, 134pp how “we talk about rape using aca - context. He manages tone shifts pre - ciousness. In “Finishing Salt,” the end 9780773551428 demic words,” but also how there is a cisely. Poems follow through on such of a relationship is consummated necessary “insistence on magic / in premises as inventing an instrument with a feast: EXCITEMENT TAX the midst of what / we were living “inspired by my daycare choir, that John Emil Vincent with.” (TL) sort of presses, almost steps on, chil - Fresh tomato, olive oil, broken DC Books dren,” dialogue between Walter Wim - bread and Turkish tea beneath the $18.95, paper, 94pp low War, Benjamin Hertwig’s ple Weaselbird (one of the book’s Bozcaada sycamore 9781927599440 debut collection of poetry, ad - characters) and Socrates, and a child S dresses the many ways in which who “never wanted to rehear a single Even the deepest losses bring BOTHISM war warps youth, hope, and desire. story.” wholeness, a sense of a journey com - Tanya Evanson The soldier speaker considers how “King Midas’s Idiot Brother” takes pleted or about to begin. Ekstasis Editions “war fucks with geography,” which is King Midas out of his fairy tale and A student of Buddhism and Su - $23.95, paper, 52pp to say, war fucks with the way we po - imagines him doing a kind of alt- fism, Evanson imbues her work with 9781771712194 sition ourselves in the world. The comedy routine in which “he’d pose inquisitive spirituality. Whether it’s gaze of the soldier is particular, differ - as the suicides of famous writers and through literal inquiry, as with “ 75 THE CHEMICAL LIFE ent from the civilian, or the journal - the audience would guess how.” But a Questions,” or an observational visit Jim Johnstone ist, or the politician. In this familiar reality creeps in, the narrator to a sheikh in Istanbul, she finds a Signal Editions collection, Hertwig remembers, in notes that “relevance is a bitch,” and tender playfulness with language that $17.95, paper, 88pp lyrical detail, moments of violence, King Midas must do a bit about recalls the minimalism of divine texts: 9781550654820 fear, and respite. He traces violence Carver instead of Chekhov. Even in “an exit without exit,” and leaves from the schoolyard to war, and its such fantastic ideation, we can be that “drop loud.” aftermath for the soldier. dulled down, taxed. This poem ends While Bothism is focused on the he Size of a Bird begins There is an especially interesting with an invitation that carries presentation of contradiction – “the with an imperative. moment of lucid self-awareness, when throughout: “Behold the life of the truth and its opposite” – there is no “Write a Place for the poetry itself is addressed: mind.” sense of distance between them. Pain” is affirmation as “The Wild Hunt” displays Vin - Rather than posing contradictions as much as it is invocation. simile and metaphor – cent’s skill with mixing registers: a way of showing difference, she is The muses being called forth are “the “The huntsmen in full cry would set posing them as a way of showing har - things that didn’t fit into the narra - tracks to get around upon any spirits whatever and devour mony, as with “the reverence of aban - tive, that didn’t quite make sense.” the fact them. And woe unto the living people donment.” Instead of two points on a Clementine Morrigan continues to that the suicide bomber in the road. It was kind of funny.” line, Evanson shows us two points on write directly about trauma, toxic was effective Then a “salted, cured human leg” is a circle, and spins us until they come relationships, sex, queer desire, that coyotes eat what they can, bestowed upon the “you” of the together. (MH) and the attempt to accept one’s that a man’s head was split poem, and the relationship with the own memories. bright like a persimmon and leg is lived through. About change, here is a shimmering layer of Morrigan alternates between forms a foot was resting on the road the possibility of abandoning the leg, violence in Jim Johnstone’s for each section of the book. The like a bird with a broken the narrator says, “it is what makes T fifth poetry collection that prose sections are immediate, often wing. the world the stinking pile of shit that serves as connective tissue for the written in the present tense, and mu - it is, but you temper your language a very dark introspection that occurs sical. In “Dead Raccoon on the High - The consequences of the indiscrimi - bit, since seriously this is your life throughout. We see this violence in way,” they contemplate their body nate violence of war are made deli - and your love and your leg.” the natural world (“Birds sucked into next to another on a park bench and cate in spite of an uneasiness with Through these tone shifts, seeming engines / and gorged by blades”) and “sounds of shimmering sentences fill making poetry of it. non sequiturs, absurd situations, and used against others: the space between silences.” Lan - In “iconoclast,” “the war is over / syntax variation that will hold the in - guage hisses; the speaker is distracted and we are still // here.” Of course, terest of anyone who likes being led Glory, by their own mind and the title image the war is not over, even if it has been down the garden path, these poems or as near I know it, interrupts the present moment. This is declared as such. This fact is demon - enact the very excitements and disap - is bloodshed how time and memory work in The strated in the way the line breaks. pointments they describe. (TL) after an attack Size of a Bird . The speaker occupies Hertwig uses “and” to connect two realities simultaneously. One on declaratives so there is a moment of othism is Tanya Evanson’s But it is just as often perpetrated the park bench and another in which stillness, but it is undercut by that debut poetry collection, but it against the self. There is an over - her “body is not a dead raccoon.” devastating “here.” And even if the Bis by no means Tanya Evan - whelming sense of a body in limbo, This tension wavers throughout the soldier leaves the front, the war is not son’s debut; she has been a corner - constantly shifting between states of collection and makes the reader a over. This is especially true in the last stone of the spoken word community decay, “the bloody nose / its carti - witness to the ways in which memo - quarter of the book. In “sunday for years, a musician, a teacher, and lage.” ries cannot be contained by past mornings,” the violence of war be - even a whirling dervish. Her back - That fascination with the self, and tense. comes inseparable from literature: ground as a performer is evident here the abuses a body can sustain – It’s worth noting the phrase that – the dynamic wordplay, the dips into whether from the world, from mental ends the first poem and the last: “I’m you start to think: the man in concrete poetry, the visual movement still alive.” Survival and the ways in Kafka’s in the layout – these poems ache to Continued on page 19 Elmslie continued from page 9 Craig continued from page 15 be transparent and data must be available to demonstrate that judges are indeed being trained and assessed. slow progress of hindsight, the process by which and understanding that inconsistencies do happen, For us, as readers, the overview provided by we order our moments to create meaning. Trauma especially when one is thinking through trauma – Craig can help in gaining an understanding of how is metabolized here rather than raw. An initial this reflects a trauma-informed approach. and why sexual assault is such a fraught crime sense of having driven off the map evolves into ac - Judges also need to be informed of the law. The from a legal perspective. In her final chapter, she ceptance and intuitive knowledge of new terrain. understanding of consent, which is presently much explains that her goal is to provide “measures that “It takes me time to process experiences,” the discussed in the media, is very clear under could be taken by the legal profession to make sex - poet replies when asked about the difficulty of air - Canadian law. Consent must be contemporaneous. ual assault trials less stressful, less traumatizing, ing personal pain in her work. “With appoint - It cannot be implied. That cannot be a defence. and less inhumane.” None of these suggestions re - ments and daily encounters, the words are Section 273 .2 (b) of the Criminal Code makes it quire transforming the legal profession or restrict - sometimes painfully superficial and perfunctory. plain that “an accused can only rely on an honest ing the rights of the accused. Revealing that the Speaking from a place of exposure lets me go but mistaken belief in consent if he took reason - majority of lawyers interviewed for the project deeper, to where we feel the impact of those ex - able steps under the circumstances to ascertain were well aware of the trauma of sexual assault changes, to where we are changed by them.” whether the complainant was, in fact, consenting.” cases and “would have serious reservations about Elmslie’s work suggests that this is poetry’s Some of the situations mentioned by Craig go far recommending that a loved one endure this pro - function: to give shape to those human experiences beyond the idea of error and are simply based on cess,” Craig’s book behooves the legal profession that lay outside of language. The act of naming the misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of the law, as a whole to think seriously about these recom - unnameable is a consolation for facing the terrify - or a reliance on basic stereotypes about women, mendations. mRb ing unknown. Poetry, as her poem of that name sex, and consent. Leaving what is perhaps the contends, contains both “lashing / and balm.” mRb most shocking fact until last, Craig describes how Erin MacLeod is a writer and journalist. She is the the majority of judges appointed to try criminal author of Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari Abby Paige is a writer and performer currently based matters have very little (and sometimes no) crimi - in the Search for the Promised Land , and she teaches in Fredericton, New Brunswick. nal law experience. Thus training and assessment literature at Vanier College. are also necessary. Educational programs need to

European handwriting when it’s in needed to be reintroduced to all the work that goes into them; all the Grondin continued from page 14 your own language, but trying to read Montrealers. We had a complete, his - decisions that need to be made; all the it in Italian was very difficult for me. toric stained-glass studio in the city of precision, skill, and artistry required, combined everything I love doing – I had to hire a native-speaking Italian Montreal – not in Europe – and and I can better appreciate the results. I learning languages, doing research, to transcribe the important letters so I nobody knew about it. remember visiting a church in Galway, travelling. It never felt like a chore. could read the typed words and make Ireland, a few years ago, as I was writ - sure I understood them correctly. LC: Guido Nincheri was a very pas - ing the book, and looking at a window LC: What gave you the most satisfac - sionate man. He lived for his art. Your that represented William Holman tion while working on this book? LC: You spent time in Nincheri’s art own passion for Nincheri and his art Hunt’s The Light of the World . In it, a MG: Whenever I discovered something studio on Pie IX Boulevard. How did it comes through in your prose. You piece of lead slashed across Jesus’s robe that nobody else knew about. For feel the first time you write that “the overall in a very, very displeasing way and I instance, nobody really knew when were alone in the studio effect of Nincheri’s thought: “Oh, Guido wouldn’t have Nincheri arrived in Montreal. Many where Nincheri created work is peace.” How accepted that kind of work!” In a way, were saying it was in 1914 , but I dis - his masterpieces? has working on this for bad or good, he defined my sense of covered that it was in November 1913 . MG: The first time I book affected or aesthetics. On the Ancestry website, I found a saw it, in 2004 , the stu - changed you? Besides “Declaration of Passenger to Canada” dio took me by sur - the pride and satisfac - LC: With all the information that form he filled out when returning to prise. It was a very odd- tion that goes hand in you’ve collected, you had to make very Canada in 1923 . In it, he wrote that looking building on the hand with having com - definitive choices about what to include his previous entry into Canada had outside – it didn’t fit pleted a long-term pro - and what to leave out. Do you have been “Nov. 1913 .” I also found the with the surrounding ject, what is the book’s any thoughts about a second volume passenger manifest of the SS Canopic , buildings – and when I lasting influence on on the topic? Any ideas about putting the ship he took from Italy to Boston. first walked in, the Mélanie Grondin? on an exhibit or giving talks about But I was most excited about the dis - vestibule and hallway MG: For one thing, I’ll Guido Nincheri? A virtual museum or covery of eight letters he sent his men - were dark and plain. I never look at a church website? tor in Italy. They contained informa - didn’t expect to find the same way. Now, MG: Nincheri has become a lifelong tion about his stay in Boston and his much aside from whenever I happen to project for me. I don’t know if another THE ART AND PASSION first years in Montreal. Information archives because the enter a church, I walk book is in the cards, but if one is need - OF that was, until now, unknown. studio had been closed around and take the ed I wouldn’t be opposed to writing it. GUIDO NINCHERI since 1996 and the time to look at the win - At the moment, Roger Boccini Nincheri Mélanie Grondin LC: How much time did you spend building uninhabited dows and art that is giving church tours and talks on his Véhicule Press researching the book versus writing it? since 1998 . But when I adorn it, even if it was - grandfather, and I may take over at one $24.95, paper, 240pp MG: I started working on the book in entered the first room n’t decorated by point. In the meantime, I’m helping 9781550654851 earnest in 2011 and I started writing in on the right and found Nincheri. I used to only him analyze his grandfather’s art and 2013 when Nancy Marelli, my editor, a completed stained-glass have that state of mind write about it. Last spring, we wrote said I needed to stop researching and window at my level, I was taken aback when I visited Europe. I travelled to the a booklet on Madonna della Difesa start putting things on paper. Of by its beauty and proximity. Then I vis - UK, Paris, Austria, and Italy, and I that can be purchased at the church. course, I never really stopped research - ited the rest of the studio and saw that would make it a point to visit their his - I have a feeling we’ll be writing more ing, but if it hadn’t been for her I might it was still just that – a studio. Where I toric churches, but whenever I went to of those. I’ve also created a website still be only reading about Nincheri. had expected an empty building, I saw a church here – for a wedding, a funer - (guidonincheri.ca), which, I hope, in Even during copyediting I had to Nincheri’s office with his name on the al, a christening – I never looked time, will become a kind of database research and double-check a few door and some of the reference books around. Granted, some churches were of his art. mRb things. There is still so much research I he used on the bookshelf behind his never elaborately decorated in that way could do, so many things I could add. I desk. I didn’t expect to see a kiln or a or were whitewashed in the 60 s, but Licia Canton is the author of The Pink had to make choices. workshop with tools and glass samples now I look, I examine. House and Other Stories (2018 ) and lying about. I was fascinated by every - Another takeaway for me is a deep - Almond Wine and Fertility (2008 ). She is LC: What was the greatest challenge thing, but I hadn’t started working on er understanding of the art of stained- founding editor-in-chief of Accenti working on this project? the book yet, so much of what I saw glass windows. It’s always been consid - Magazine and (co)editor of ten volumes. MG: The biggest challenge was proba - didn’t make much sense to me. I guess ered a lower art and I never really bly deciphering handwritten letters. It’s my first visit to the studio convinced bothered looking at windows, aside hard enough to understand old, me that, more than ever, Nincheri from scanning them, but now I know

17 GERALD L’ECUYER non- fiction The Two-Headed Balm of Greek Tragedy

ANTIGONE UNDONE is his sensitivity not so much to the tech - Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo van Hove, niques of art, but to its effects that lend and the Art of Resistance the account power. That sensitivity makes Will Aitken the book more than cultural journalism; it University of Regina Press turns it into a quest to understand the $24.95, cloth, 240pp way the human heart makes meaning out vering. This moment near the book’s close demon - 9780889775213 of trauma. strates it: Following the performance, the author ill Aitken does something heads to Amsterdam for some holiday [a] terrible sadness comes on slow. A different remarkable in his new time and finds his memories of the show kind of sadness from what I felt eight months ago book: he brings together pulling him toward depression. He con - in Luxembourg. Not overwhelming but simply a keen critical eye and an open siders how the victimization of the less powerful by intrinsic to this little world onstage and to the heart, and – in doing so – creates a the more so rushes on unabated, even two and a half larger one beyond it. The melancholy of having uWnique hybrid of critical essay and memoir. And millennia after Sophokles imagined the tragedy of lived, the irreparability of the world. though Aitken begins with strong material – a classic Oedipus’s daughter. So deep does this depression play in a new translation by a major poet, staged by become that thoughts of suicide haunt him while he In the end, it is the book’s rigorous gaze, both a renowned actor and director – it’s what he does struggles with the play’s impact, and through it, the knowing and so knowledgeable, along with its vul - with the material that is most striking. impact of a world still filled with suffering. Working nerability, that compels us while simultaneously Antigone Undone’ s occasion is a 2015 invitation through these feelings, the author parses Carson’s pointing out how timely Antigone is, how relevant from Anne Carson for Aitken to travel to translation and pages through considerations of the its message is now, and how any simple parallel or Luxembourg and observe the rehearsal and first play by writers and philosophers as diverse as Hegel easy summary, even this one, still needs to be ques - night of the stage version of her new translation of and Virginia Woolf, Judith Butler and Kierkegaard in tioned, still needs to be rethought and made anew. Sophokles’s Antigone. Unsurprisingly, Aitken accepts, later sections of the book. His touch here is light, That is no small thing, because it reminds us of what and he captures the experience with nuance and and readers with both more and less interest in phi - much critical writing neglects: the way in which there insight. The author is particularly sharp on fine losophy will find something compelling in watching is something in art, despite its limitations, that one points of performance and staging; his experience as the search for meaning unfold. still turns to when one faces troubles. And everyone, a film writer shows in his precision. He notes, for So, Antigone Undone has great strengths – and sooner or later, does. mRb example, the way the face of a great actor is a many of them – but no book is free of issues. Here “palimpsest” in which one watches a performance they are largely structural in nature, or involve shifts Peter Dubé is the author of the novels Hovering World and through the layers of past performances still living in in tone which sometimes disrupt the emotional The City’s Gates , the novella Subtle Bodies , a finalist for memory, and brings forward meaningful details such power that keeps one reading. But Aitken’s sentences the Shirley Jackson Award, and Conjure , a collection of as the moment the actor playing Kreon pulls his suit always shine. His command of cultural history and prose poems shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize. His most jacket over his head during a crisis point. However, it language, and his psychological honesty, are unwa - recent work is Beginning with the Mirror .

gram that provided free public transit dur - “the issue of (free) public transport can - includes illuminating discussion of wider Free Ticket ing morning and evening rush hours and not be separated from the broader issues movements, such as Right to the City in extremely low fares at other times of day. of social inequality, [and] structures of Mexico, who include mobility rights and Bologna’s success is just one of several production and consumption.” fare-free public transportation in their to Ride interesting stories in Judith Dellheim and Unfortunately, her deluge of statistics platforms. Jason Prince’s engaging, if at times frus - about pollution, automotive manufacturer But who pays, if not the bus rider or FREE PUBLIC TRANSIT trating, Free Public Transit: And Why We profits, and natural resource exploitation metro user? Jan Scheurer answers both And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators . The chap - read more like a laundry list of capitalists’ this question and the one embedded in the Edited by Judith Dellheim ters, written by academics, journal - crimes than building blocks for a com - title with her final chapter, “Value and Jason Prince ists, and activists, delve into the pelling argument. Her piece would have Capture: Linking Public Transport to Black Rose Books “political side” of the question of benefitted from more space. Land Value.” We don’t pay to ride eleva - $23.00, paper, 250pp how best to address the mobility Brevity better suits the narrative chap - tors in shopping malls; the building own - 9781551646503 needs of a city. ters, which focus on activist agitation and ers do, because they are the ones who ben - Three opening chapters set the transit policy implementation in places efit from our business. In the same way, nce we context for the case studies and from Sweden to Brazil, Mexico City to argues Scheurer, a well-connected transit regarded activist accounts that follow. Toronto. Prince offers a detailed, play-by- system “increases the value of [land] “O traffic as a Wojciech Kębłowski establishes that play history of the Montreal Citizens’ parcels … – and perhaps principally – purely technical prob - free public transport, defined as sys - Movement, a leftist municipal political benefits the owners of land in the city.” lem,” said Mauro tems where transport is free for party created in the 1970 s, and the push Scheurer makes a convincing case for fur - Formaglini, Bologna’s most users, on most routes, most of for free public transportation. Initially ther investigation by policy makers and Traffic Counsellor in the early 1970 s. the time, is already a reality in at least demanding transport gratuit pour les per - activists of a “betterment tax” charged to “We have now realized that every traffic ninety-seven cities across the world. Jan sonnes du troisième âge , the movement land owners to finance public transit in question has a political side too.” Scheurer looks at new technologies, expanded after a transit rate hike spurred perpetuity, calculated using comprehensive In 1972 , Bologna was bursting with including driverless cars, which may radi - student involvement. data on transit connectivity. automobiles: second only to Turin, the cally reshape how people move through Montreal students began jumping Free Public Transit is an intriguing, if city had one car for every two and a half the city. Judith Dellheim reviews the polit - turnstiles to disrupt the transit system in too brief, snapshot of what a transit sys - residents. Each day, 200 ,000 cars flooded ical economy of transportation. defiance of the fare hike. The same tactic tem that served the needs of everyone in the city’s downtown. Two years later, that These short chapters are the weakest was adopted by Planka.nu (whose name the city could look like and how it could number had dropped by 25 percent. In among the collection. Kębłowski’s, at roughly translates to fare-dodge.now ), a be realized. mRb the same period, public transit usage three and a half pages, is too quick a Stockholm-based grassroots organization increased by 50 percent. After an exten - summary. Scheurer takes a surprisingly profiled by Anna Nygård. The activist Yutaka Dirks is a writer and editor living in sive, decentralized democratic planning optimistic (one could say uncritical) view group, which rallies around a strident cri - Montreal. He has written for the Los process, Bologna’s city council, relying on of how automobile automation would tique of neo-liberal economic policies, Angeles Review of Books , THIS , Briarpatch , the support of a coalition of left-wing and play out, downplaying its potential for was formed in response to transit fare Ricepaper , rabble , and other publications. communist members, had begun a pro - increasing gridlock. Dellheim writes that increases in 2001 . Free Public Transit also non-fiction The Vibrant World of Quebec bédé

BDQ Essays and Interviews on Quebec Comics Edited by Andy Brown Conundrum Press $25.00, paper, 224pp 9781772620184

s editor Andy Brown sets out in the foreword of this collec - Ation of essays and interviews, BDQ refers to Quebec comics or bande dessinée québécoise , just as manga refers to comics from Japan. Unsurprisingly, Quebec is unique in its comics culture, which draws heavi - ly on the Franco-Belgian tradition due to the shared language, and is also strongly influenced by North American trends, in particular the US underground comix movement of the 1960 s and zines in the 1990 s. Brown, also the publisher at Conundrum, acknowledges that the collection is only “a smattering” of what is available on Quebec comics. But obviously the featured artists, images, and essays, in his view, reflect important moments in BDQ his - tory. The collection is divided into four time periods, with the longest section devoted to “The Nineties,” evidently an ebullient period for sequential art, particularly in Montreal. “The Early Years” focuses on Quebec comics that were published in news - papers with little or no text. The strips published between 1904 and 1909 were intended for adults and mirrored the social concerns of the day, such as urbanization, the woes of the working poor, and the arrival of new Canadians. This section includes a particularly interesting essay on the style, technique, and influences of Albert Chartier in his well-known strip Onésime . “The Middle Years” takes us to the 1980 s and introduces us to artists including Réal Godbout, the creator of Red Ketchup, and Jimmy Beaulieu, a principled creator who refuses to turn his back on Quebec comics. One of the most interesting pieces in this section is a previously unpublished letter from Julie Delporte to Sylvie Rancourt about the feminist significance of Rancourt’s Poetry continued from page 16 Mélody and the sensitive intelligence of her work. The party really gets started in “The Nineties,” and the two reigning stars illness, or from one’s own hand – gives The Chemical Life its hypnotic quality. of this section are underground superhero Henriette Valium and international - Bodies are constantly surprising, the impacts of suffering reaching new heights, ly acclaimed comic artist Julie Doucet. But the BDQ community apparently and all the while “mania splits / the mind’s roof.” The juxtaposition of a body had its cultural clashes. In response to an article penned by Marc Tessier, “The and mind in discord is built into the structure of the book; one’s embodied real - Montreal Comix Scene,” published in a 2005 special edition of The Comics ity is always in conflict with one’s perceptions. This contrast finds its expression Journal , a group of people took issue with Tessier’s portrayal and let him in a “second state,” as shown by the “tinted eye,” or the fish “fighting its re - know, point by point, in Letters to the Editor of The Comics Journal #274 flection / in two- / way glass.” (February 2006 ). In a previously unpublished essay on Fish Piss , Andy Brown Johnstone is at his most heartbreaking when he speaks on masculinity and on refers to the zine that ran from 1996 to 2006 as truly bilingual. Its comics, relationships between men, looking at the emotional distance between fathers essays, poems, and stories were published in French and English without and sons, the way they “hardly know each other, have never shown / weak - translation, since its audience was as bilingual as its editor, Louis Rastelli. ness—not convinced of its existence.” The scorpion’s venom that hides a deeper, The final section, “Modern Times,” introduces comic artists who have had more permanent anguish: some recent commercial success. It features interviews with the late Geneviève Castrée, Michel Rabagliati, Zviane, and Diane Obomsawin, in addition to If you think I’m ungrateful, try being betrayed essays on the creator of Mile End , Michel Hellman, and the collaborative by the orthodoxy, your children work of Zviane and Iris in L’hostie d’chat . This collection is a great primer for anyone interested in graphic novels or and everyone else sequential art from Quebec. Among the essays, I preferred those that touched on the artist’s approach to stories and their work methods. As editor, Brown who doubts the scorpion’s malice also did a commendable job of focusing on comics created by women when the BDQ scene has long been dominated by men. After the fact. Personally, I found the interview with Henriette Valium unreadable, but I’m nevertheless interested in seeing more work by this apparent iconoclast. The Chemical Life is a painful read, with images so visceral, primal – yet Another unsatisfying read was “A Round Table on 1990 s Quebec Comics.” controlled – that they leave us disoriented, seeing double. This bold and self- Although some interesting points were made, the number of participants made reflexive collection allows us to experience a personal history as a slow release it hard to follow. My final criticism is the collection’s very small print. of pain, felt over the course of a lifetime. (MH) mRb As the publisher at Conundrum, Brown has a vested interest in the success of BDQ, but it’s also apparent from this collection that he has made an almost Tess Liem ’s debut full-length collection of poetry will be out from Coach House in fall selfless commitment to the vibrancy of this community. Conundrum has trans - 2018 . Her chapbook, “Tell everybody I say hi,” is available from Anstruther. lated many high-profile Quebec bédéistes , including Michel Rabagliati and his seminal work The Song of Roland , for the English-speaking world to discover. Marcela Huerta is the author of Tropico , a collection of poetry published by Metatron With support like this, we might soon see comics finally recognized as a true Press in 2017 . She has worked at the Museum of Anthropology and Working Format as art form in Canada. mRb a Graphic Designer, and at Drawn & Quarterly as an Assistant Editor. She is the proud daughter of Chilean refugees. Find her online @marsmella. Heather Leighton has written for the Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette .

19 graphic Cold Wars

RED WINTER Anneli Furmark Translated by Hanna Strömberg Drawn & Quarterly $24.95, paper, 168pp 9781770463066

he heartfelt and melancholic story in Red Winter covers just a few days of a passionate love affair during a frigid winter in a small Swedish steel-mill town in the 1970s. But it is broader in its emotional scope: it delivers a lovely snapshot of the lives of ordinary people, including their stifled desires, isolation, loss of prospects, and political hopes. It is the first comic book by Anneli Furmark to be translated into English. Furmark, who is also a family, to the Tpainter, is one of the most celebrated cartoonists Party, and to in her country. She published several books in the each other, and in last two decades and won an Adamson Award the end they have and three Urhunden Prizes from the Swedish little control over Comics Association, including one for Red Winter . their destiny in a world where his idealism does Red Winter is the first book in a trilogy about The two clandestine lovers in Red Winter are not pay off and her pragmatism is insufficient. the lives of ordinary people in northern Sweden. Siv, a married woman pushing forty with three The art delicately conveys those moods. Here’s hoping that publishers will offer English children, and Ulrik, a much younger communist Mainly in cold blues of the outdoors with warm red readers an opportunity to appreciate more work mRb activist. Politics complicate everything: Siv is a and orange highlights in cozy interiors, it wraps from this talented author. member of the Social Democratic Party and her the narrative in loose and spontaneous water - husband is a Social Democrat union member, colours. The relaxed lines make even harsh Eloisa Aquino is originally from Brazil, where she while Ulrik is a staunch Maoist. Siv and Ulrik’s moments tolerable, while the sweetest scenes worked as a journalist and translator. She currently lives romance is central in a narrative that is dominat - remain restrained – and slightly claustrophobic. and works in Montreal running the micro press B&D ed by Siv but approached polyphonically, with The drawings are textured and layered, much like Press and making the zine series The Life & Times of each chapter told from the point of view of a dif - the situations, and express Furmark’s affection Butch Dykes . ferent character: Siv’s children and husband, and generosity toward her characters. Ulrik’s communists comrades, and Ulrik and Siv themselves. This technique works beautifully not only in terms of rhythm, allowing subtle changes from action to contemplation, from togetherness to soli - tude, but also gives the reader a sensation of totality, as if the story of individuals is inescapably connected to the people around them and to his - torical and political events. It is quite an accom - plishment for the format, and even though the term “comic book” ceased to be derogatory ages ago, it is rare that the description “graphic novel” fits a book so perfectly. Furmark is a gifted writer, and the translation feels natural and gracious. She has an excellent ear for dialogue that feels genuine without being trite. She depicts small moments with depth, and large moments with tenderness. When Siv’s daughter, Marina, is alone at home snooping or hanging out with a friend, we feel that odd, som - bre nostalgia of childhood: the playful doing noth - ing that teaches us who we are, the anxiety of not knowing enough of the adult world and wanting to know more, while at the same time knowing per - haps too much (she finds out about the affair; she discovers “forbidden” magazines in the house). Peter, Siv’s son, immersed in his own teenage alienation from people and his environment, is presented with great compassion. Börje, the betrayed husband, personifies the ethos of a working-class man who “knows his place” in soci - ety, who is dependably boring. And Siv and Ulrik are just disoriented in their divided loyalties to young adult Brave New Worlds

the grocery store his family owns a OPHELIA financial success. Each chapter opens Charlotte Gingras with a historical newspaper quote Illustrated by Daniel Sylvestre about Robinson – creating a sort of Translated by Christelle Morelli parallel between Joey and Robinson’s and Susan Ouriou trials (Robinson faced opposition and Groundwood Books racism that season and beyond). They $18.95, paper, 264pp also help paint a picture of what it 9781773060996 could have been like to live in the Ages 14+ city during that momentous baseball season. t’s a notebook There’s a genuinely touching that takes us into my back to the windows, moment when Joey and his brother I the inner sphere of staring at the wall in front CLUTCH David finally get close to Ophelia, the protago - of me. It was gray. I held a Heather Camlot Robinson, and an impres - nist of Charlotte piece of white chalk in my Red Deer Press sive account of the Royals’ Gingras’s eponymous hand and let the drawing $12.95, paper, 240pp Junior World Series victory. novel, something the that’s been inside me for 9780889955486 Camlot’s writing never lags fifteen-year-old would so long bubble to the Ages 9-13 or falls to generalizations: not – or could not – surface.” The building “I don’t even remember otherwise allow. provides Ophelia with eather turning onto Park Avenue, Through written the kind of space, Camlot’s but here I am, right in front entries, sketches, and physical and figurative, meticulously of the angel statue. I look poems addressed to a writer who she needs to create. H researched up at the mountain. The gives her the notebook, Ophelia It’s painful to watch Ophelia push and lovingly crafted rising sun tears along shares her palpable pain. Secrets come people away and hurt them with debut novel Clutch trans - Rachel Street, through out: an incident of sexual abuse, her insults, especially Ulysses, who’s over - ports readers to Montreal in 1946 – Fletcher’s Field, and straight for complicated relationship with her weight and bullied. But it also makes the year Jackie Robinson played for Mount Royal, all that light making mother, dealings with the “herd” at the growing closeness between the the professional minor league baseball the leaves of the red oaks and sugar school. Credit is due to the transla - two teenagers all the more satisfying. team the Montreal Royals, as the first maples burst with the brightest reds tors for giving English readers access Although Ophelia’s notebook culmi - African American to join modern and oranges and golds.” to Ophelia’s unique voice. nates in a love story, it doesn’t hap - organized baseball. Everyone is struggling to make Although written in a stream-of- pen at the cost of her development In Camlot’s story, it’s also when their way, including a small-time consciousness style, the short chapters as a person and artist. twelve-year-old Joey Grosser’s dad criminal who tries to rope Joey into are carefully crafted. Each contains “I’m discovering the light that dies. Readers follow Joey around his his shenanigans, and there’s a lot at black and white doodles, drawings, exists in certain people,” Ophelia Jewish neighbourhood on his difficult stake. In time Joey comes to his own and collages that give visual life to says. Her first love does all the open - but transformative journey into realizations about his dad, money, Ophelia’s thoughts. Gingras’s descrip - ing and healing it should, as she and manhood. and friendship: perhaps in many tions of the abandoned building her boyfriend replace their idealized The story dazzles with tight, pithy ways, buying your seven-year-old Ophelia comes to reluctantly share as and theoretical notions of love and writing and accurate historical details super-fan brother peanuts and a workspace with a schoolmate who lust with the reality of one another. mRb that are smoothly woven in. Even Cracker Jack at the ball game is calls himself Ulysses are particularly without his father, Joey is committed pretty much as good as it gets. vivid: “The setting sun shone through Vanessa Bonneau is a writer living to doing everything he can to make the big grid windows. I sat on a stool, in Montreal.

Atwater Library and Computer Centre invites you to …

Borrow a Book Use Our Computers Take a Computer Course welcomes spring with local history Hold a Meeting John Kalbfleisch’s Montreal novel Attend a Reading A Stain upon the Land Meet an Author Volunteer Robert N. Wilkins’ and “The Star” Give Montreal 1909 Visit the Atwater Writers Exhibition Don Stewart’s The History of Morin Heights Bibliothèque et centre d’informatique 1200 Atwater Avenue 514-457-5733 (at Ste-Catherine) [email protected] 514-935-7344 atwaterlibrary.ca Atwater www.shorelinepress.ca Library and Computer Centre

21 STOLEN WORDS Melanie Florence Illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard Second Story Press $17.95, cloth, 24pp 9781772600377 yo ung readers Ages 6-9

THE SPIRIT TRACKERS Jan Bourdeau Waboose Illustrated by François Thisdale Fifth House Publishers elanie Florence’s Stolen Words because it is more powerful than mere humans afford to pay for her lessons. After a chance $18.95, cloth, 32pp is a modern story, a hopeful will ever be. meeting in a city park, Mr. Mergler agrees to 9781927083116 exploration of one way the teach the enthusiastic girl for free. Despite their Ages 4-8 Cree people may begin to n 2011, inspired by something he saw during differences in age and life experience, the two reclaim their language and a visit to the Montreal share a profound love of classical FANIA’S HEART culture. The stolen words of the title refer to the Holocaust Museum, filmmaker music that transcends M I Anne Renaud practice in residential schools of forcing all First Carl LeBlanc released a critically time and place. Illustrated by Nations children, including the Cree, to speak acclaimed documentary called Cinq-Mars’s illustra - Richard Rudnicki only the white person’s languages. “They took The Heart of Auschwitz . What he tions, in gentle shades of Second Story Press our words, locked them away; punished us until saw was a daisy-sized, heart- green, gold, and pink, do a $18.95, cloth, 32pp we forgot them, until we sounded like them,” shaped card that unfolded like beautiful job of weaving 9781772600575 Melanie Florence writes. an origami flower to reveal the musical symbols and luxuri - Ages 7-10 The author, who is of Cree and Scottish messages written inside. The ant foliage together on descent, dedicated the book to her deceased cover was made of purple fabric every page. The student’s MR. MERGLER, grandfather and to the idea that a healing rela - and embroidered with an playing produces a verdant BEETHOVEN, AND ME tionship between generations can lead to posi - orange F on the cover. The F entangling of vines with David Gutnick tive change. While the story of how the stood for Fania, who was the green leaves and bursting Illustrated by Canadian government destroyed the lives of twenty-year-old recipient of petals laid over a sheet of Mathilde Cinq-Mars First Nations children is harsh, the subject is the gift. The nineteen mes - faded musical notation paper. Second Story Press handled with dignity and love. The emphasis is sages inside were written by The girl zooms home when $18.95, cloth, 32pp on how children can help their elders heal rather Fania’s friends, all of who worked beside her as she finds out that Mr. Mergler 9781772600599 than on the pain and abuse. The illustrations by slave labourers in the Weichsel-Union- will teach her, her bicycle wheels following the Ages 7-10 Gabrielle Grimard are suffused with warm tones Metallwerke and, like her, were prisoners in one curving lines of a musical staff – she leaves a of yellow, green, and brown, the lines playful of the Nazi’s most infamous death trail of notes that stretch behind her all the way ANNA AND FROGA and full of movement. camps. back to her new teacher. This is a sweet story Completely Bubu Holocaust historians have said it about the transformative power of music. Anouk Ricard ike Stolen Words , Jan would have been impossible for the Readers who are interested can also check out Translated by Bourdeau Waboose’s women who signed the card to the film version of this true story on the Helge Dascher The Spirit Trackers is a have made this intricate heart- National Film Board website under the title Mr. L Drawn & Quarterly modern story that has clear shaped gift. They’ve also said that Mergler’s Gift . $21.95, paper, 208pp connections to First Nations Fania could not have hidden the 9781770462922 culture and history. In fact, card from the camp guards or con - or the first time, publishing powerhouse Ages 8+ The Spirit Trackers is two sto - cealed it during the death march - Drawn & Quarterly has put together the ries in one book. One story is es. And yet, the card remains, a Fdefinitive collection of Anna and Froga the tale of the northern tactile testament to resilience, comics. Originally issued Windigo: The Wandering Spirit survival, and love. as five shorter books, the of the Winter. The second story Anne Renaud’s Fania’s Heart comics are now brought is about what happens when tells the story of the heart- together so readers can two young boys visit their uncle shaped card from Fania’s perspective. The indulge in 210 pages of and decide they are ready to follow the family story is an explanation to Fania’s young daugh - non-stop fun. Anouk Ricard tradition and become trackers. The character of ter, who finds the card in her mother’s drawer is both writer and illustra - the uncle connects the two stories, one ancient and asks to hear the story of where it came from. tor, and her deceptively and one new. As Fania explains, the card is important both on a simple-looking drawings The uncle’s terrifying description of the personal level and as a symbol of the unbeliev - manage to create a whole Windigo both horrifies the boys and galvanizes able power of friendship, loyalty, and courage. universe. Children will love them into action: “It has a heart of ice and its Given the content of the story, which goes into picking out all the quirky teeth are like steel. It will eat anything in its detail about the conditions at Auschwitz, and the details, from the tiny insects way.” Despite the strange sounds they hear and amount of text on each page, Fania’s Heart is to the sheer variety of flow - the unsettling shadows they see during a sleep - appropriate for older kids. The illustrations are ers and plants that fill this less winter night, the boys put on snowshoes reminiscent of drawings from the 1950s, intend - silly world. Stories that talk and dare to venture out in search of the Windigo. ed perhaps to invoke the era when Fania’s about poo, extol the pleasures They find more than they bargained for, and in daughter originally found the card. And for chil - of hitting things with sticks, or reveal what to the process learn about themselves and their dren and adults who are interested in this amaz - do when a werewolf moves in next door are ancestors. ing story, you can watch Carl LeBlanc’s wonderful sure to entertain both kids and the adults A well-respected illustrator and winner of film or head to the Montreal Holocaust Museum around them. Ricard has also included full- multiple awards, François Thisdale showcases his and see this inspiring object for yourselves. page cartoons after each story that add to unique blend of drawing, photography, digital the fun. A surefire hit for fans of Anna and imagery, and printing in The Spirit Trackers . The omething magical happens when music Froga who want what they love in one place artist’s technique, already impressive, is only get - brings people together. In David Gutnick’s and a great introduction for readers who ting better and better. The expressions on the SMr. Mergler, Beethoven, and Me , a common haven’t yet experienced the pleasures of boys’ faces are hilarious, and the textures of love for the piano results in a friendship between Ricard’s charming universe. mRb snow and hair sparkle and pop, almost appearing two unlikely strangers. Mr. Mergler is a seventy- to be three-dimensional. six-year-old bachelor and piano teacher. His new B.A. Markus is a writer, teacher, and performer. She is The moral of the Anishinaabe tale the uncle friend is a young child who has recently arrived currently writing a collection of monologues about tells about the Windigo remains relevant to all of from China. The girl, who remains unnamed in how mothers survive the realities of mothering. us who occupy this wintery province. Respect the book, has already taught herself to play and honour The Wandering Spirit of the Winter, piano but knows her immigrant parents can’t essay

a non-Mi’kmaw-speaking poet who knows Part of my experience at Salon du livre very little French, I am not surprised that des Premières Nations was an arrival, the opportunity to potentially publish in a place where I was met with other French came before Mi’kmaw. Why? Why Indigenous writers, translators, artists, aren’t more books published in First scholars, and thinkers. I wasn’t alone in Finding Space at Kwahiatonhk! Nations languages? Will more publishers be my room, bound by the confines of my publishing books in Indigenous languages? mind, or seated at the colonial table. The Shannon Webb-Campbell Visits Perhaps. While at the festival, Deerchild let thing is, this fear of not being Indigenous audience members know she was offered a enough is much like the fear of not being the Salon du livre des Premières Nations French translation before Cree, and object - poet enough. I am looking outside of ed. She insisted Calling Down the Sky be myself to be framed. To be given permis - published in Cree before it was released in sion. To be seen. That’s part of a colonial yet another colonial language. lens, a gaze that looks outside for valida - his past fall I was invited to read at Salon du As I was sitting next to Innu poet, song - tion rather than within. Gatherings like livre des Premières Nations in Wendake First writer, and documentary filmmaker Salon du livre des Premières Nations offer Joséphine Bacon at an author signing, she a place for a Mi’kmaq poet like myself to Nation. At first, I was hesitant to go. Not leaned in close and told me I speak too claim the space I’ve written myself in, as because I wasn’t honoured by the invitation, quietly. I needed to learn to speak up to be both insider and outsider. T heard. She said this as her kind eyes twin - Some of the challenges of a multilingual but because I wondered if I was Indigenous enough. At kled, even though I started to burn with literary environment are exactly what moments, I questioned whether I was even poet enough. shame. Part of how I became a poet is makes it rich, diverse, and decolonial. because poetry is the place where I’ve No one is on solid footing. No one is an learned to speak from. I think of Bacon’s authority. Every writer and audience mem - Being a newcomer to Montreal, and an General’s Performing Arts Award for poem “ma richesse s’appelle,” from Nous ber becomes closer to the land, and in turn Anglophone at that, I’m certainly an out - Lifetime Artistic Achievement in the sommes tous des sauvages , and these lines: to one another, through the relationship of sider within the context of Quebec, an Theatre category. poetics. Each language pays respect to the uninvited guest on Mohawk territory. As a For Picard-Sioui, it’s a privilege to my headdress is called ancestors, as we continue to honour seven Mi’kmaq poet who relocated from the East honour the trailblazers, yet he imagines eagle generations through publishing and orating

Coast and speaks no French (yet), it was someday the festival will outgrow itself. my song is called our stories, poems, and songs. mRb both a privilege and a reality check to be “I hope one day it won’t be necessary – drum invited into a mostly Francophone area, that Indigenous literature will be every - and I am called Shannon Webb-Campbell is a Mi’kmaq poet, and on top of it all to be a guest on where and there won’t be a need for such human † writer, and critic. Her first book, Still No Huron-Wendat territory. a festival. We are still the only festival of Word (2015 ) was the inaugural recipient Salon du livre des Premières Nations its kind in French in the country. There’s Both her presence and poetics are made of Egale Canada’s Out In Print Award. (also known as Kwahiatonhk!, which in still a lot of work to do. I would love to of resilience, and sitting next to her, I was Who Took My Sister? is her second book. the Wendat language translates to “we tighten our relations with Indigenous writ - reminded of language, and how I am poet, write!”) is a three-day festival and book ers across Canada who publish in English. not savage, that I’m called human, and like fair hosted at Hôtel-Musée Premières We must work together across the colonial hers, my voice matters. Nations that offers opportunities for linguistic divide.” French and English writers, poets, and As the only annual event in Quebec † The English version of this poem was found at http://humanrights.ca/blog/poetry-josephine-bacon translators to mingle. Originally founded where French and English Indigenous writ - in 2011 by Daniel Sioui from Librairie ers can gather, Salon du livre des Premières Hannenorak, the festival eventually Nations is a celebration of culture, litera - expanded into a collective run by Sioui, ture, and Indigeneity. The vast majority of Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui, and Jean Sioui, published Indigenous writers in Quebec are which was incorporated into a non-profit based on reserves, or in isolated areas in 2015 . This past fall, in its sixth incarna - where literature is not a hot topic. The fes - tion, the festival was a transformative tival offers an opportunity to connect with gathering of spirit, poetry, language, publishers and other Indigenous writers. and translation. “It’s become a big family for the Salon du livre des Premières Nations authors, but also for the publishers, schol - was born out of necessity. “It was quite ars, translators, and the public. Each year difficult to get the literary world and the we welcome new writers to share new general public in Quebec interested in points of view about Indigenous writing Indigenous literature from here. Beautiful and what it can be,” Picard-Sioui says. “A things were happening, but nobody was lot of writers tell me how the festival has taking notice,” says Picard-Sioui. been important for them. How it helped “Sometimes festivals would invite their careers, and breaks the solitude of Indigenous authors, but mostly big names writing.” from Canada or the United States who This year CBC Radio host and Cree worked in English. There was no place for poet Rosanna Deerchild read from a bor - Indigenous writers who write in French. rowed copy of her book Calling Down the Aboriginal events elsewhere in Canada Sky , as her baggage and books were lost weren’t interested either. It’s like we didn’t in transit en route to Wendake. Like the exist at all.” Indigenous Wonder Woman that she is, At its heart, the mission of Salon du Deerchild improvised, in new boots bought livre des Premières Nations is to promote on the reserve at Giant Tiger, and shared Indigenous literature from Quebec, and stories of her mother’s painful experiences help build the infrastructure for French in the residential school system. Whether Indigenous writers to develop, evolve, and she’s interviewing Buffy Sainte-Marie on air “become a cultural force,” says Picard- or performing poetry at a bar, Deerchild is Sioui. This year’s festival offered a play - a firecracker, an embodied poet and a pub - writing element, highlighting the work of lic figure. After meeting Deerchild, I wrote Drew Hayden Taylor, Dave Jenniss, and a letter-poem for her that will be included Yves Sioui Durand with round table con - in my book Who Took My Sister? , forth - versations and public interviews. There coming from Book*hug. was a special tribute show to Durand, During my time at Salon du livre des the founder of Ondinnok, Quebec’s first Premières Nations, one of the many conver - French-language Indigenous theater com - sations I had was about the possibility of pany, and recipient of the 2017 Governor having my work translated into French. As Back to Beer ... and Hockey The Story of Eric Molson HELEN ANTONIOU Cloth, 456pp – May French language edition is available: Le retour à la bière … et au hockey: L’histoire d’Eric Molson

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