2 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 people

alone, hunched over my keyboard, star- Life is about taking risks… WHO’S NOT AFRAID OF ing at a glowing screen, and thinking to Meg Tilly of Victoria has a myself, as I stretched the kinks out of growing reputation as a novel- my back, that just writing wasn’t suffi- cient anymore. That if plugging out an- ist, with four titles under her other manuscript and another, and belt. Her young adult novel Por- VIRGINIA WOOLF another, was all that I did to the end of cupine (Tundra 2007) was nomi- Former Hollywood star Meg Tilly decides, my days, I would have squandered too nated for a B.C. Book Prize. many of life’s precious hours. I made an effort to contact old But she is revisiting her act- “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” friends, to try to make new ones. I started ing career by taking the starring OULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND VOLUNTEER TO going on long walks, trying to absorb the role as Martha in Edward Albee’s smells of the woods, the cold slap of salty memorize a hefty two-hundred-and-fifty-seven pages Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, ocean-scented air, the crunch and slide from July 5-17 at Victoria’s of dialogue, then exacerbate the situation by not of pebbles under my feet, smoothed out from being tossed on countless shores, MacPherson Playhouse. only agreeing to rattle off said two-hundred-and- and it was good. It did help, but still it Although Oscar-nominated Wfifty-seven pages of material while trying to climb into the skin of an wasn’t enough. Tilly appeared in films such as incredibly complicated woman, but agreeing to do it under bright lights, And then, this Christmas, after the The Big Chill and Agnes of God, hustle and bustle of stockings and on a nightly basis, in a theatre full of hundreds of strangers? presents and turkey dinner, after my sis- this will be her first appearance ters had left and my visiting children had I don’t know the answer to that ques- like an unwieldy turkey vulture, day af- in live theatre. disappeared to their various corners of tion. I do know that not only did I agree ter day, as I try to cram all these lines We asked Meg Tilly to explain the house, I bent over to switch off the to play Martha in Edward Albee’s into my fifty-one-year-old premenopau- Christmas tree lights and I found a small her risk-taking gambit. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but I re- sal brain, is, why? wrapped present that had been over- ally, really wanted to do it. I wish I had a simple answer for you, looked sitting forlornly under the tree. And the question but I don’t. It was a mishmash of events “A present!” I said, dropping to my that hovers that led me to this point. My youngest belly, so I could reach under the above me, child left home last year and after spend- branches and rescue it. circling ing the last twenty-six years of my life It was for me! For Meg, was on the raising, cooking, supporting and loving gift tag and love, Jennifer was scrawled my three kids, when the house emptied, underneath. And there was something there was a hole. magical about finding that present in I write novels, but even that was no the darkened living room, the house longer enough. I found myself getting quiet, the Christmas tree lights twin- up from my desk after spending hours kling. There was something about hold- ing that small little box in my hand that caused a tingle to go chasing through me. I went to my writing room, shut the door, sat at my desk and carefully un- wrapped it. Inside, nestled on a bed of cotton was a silver bracelet. “Hmm…” I said. There was something carved on the thin band. I held it closer so I could see more clearly, It is never too late to be what you might have been, a George Eliot quote. Oh pooh, I thought, sitting back in my chair, the bracelet resting on my up- turned palms. That’s silly. I am very happy with my life. And right on the heels of that, You’ve always wanted to do theatre, dropped into my head. Instantly, I was scared. Scared, but excited, because I knew there was no going back. One thing lead to another and within a matter of weeks I found myself com- mitted to performing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, this July, at the MacPherson Playhouse. I vacillate between being thrilled and Novelist Meg Tilly totally terrified. Would I go back and waits for the ferry undo it? Absolutely not! And yes, I might after the first make a total fool of myself, fall on my ass or worse, but whatever happens, good or Galiano Island bad, at least I won’t die with regrets on PHOTO Writers Festival. my lips, disappointed in myself, that I had

TWIGG this secret dream and I didn’t even try.

Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 Contributors: Hannah Main-van der Kamp, John Moore, SUMMER Joan Givner, Sage Birchwater, Laurie Neale, Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: BC BookWorld, For this issue, we gratefully Mark Forsythe, Louise Donnelly, Roxana Necsulescu, 2011 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 acknowledge the unobtrusive Cherie Thiessen, Shane McCune, Joseph Farris assistance of Canada Council, a Produced with the sponsorship of Pacific BookWorld News Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. BC Issue, Consultants: Sharon Jackson, George Maddison continuous partner since 1988. Society. Publications Mail Registration No. 7800. BOOKWORLD BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 Photographers: Barry Peterson, Laura Sawchuk Vol. 25, No. 2 Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Jeremy Twigg Advertising & editorial: BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics. Deliveries: Ken Reid In-Kind Supporters: Publisher/ Writer: Alan Twigg Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3. Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011 Simon Fraser University Library; Email: [email protected]. Annual subscription: $25 All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at Editor/Production: David Lester www.abcbookworld.com Vancouver Public Library.

3 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 JEN SOOKFONG LEE’S BETTER MOTHERTHE

“A poignant story of loss, truth and the power of friendship.” —Chatelaine

“The Better Mother brilliantly invites us to see the forgotten lives that have populated our cities— their vulnerabilities, their luminous and indomitable energy.” —David Chariandy, author of Soucouyant

“With great tenderness and poetry, Lee pulls aside the masks we wear to hide our raw emotions even while we yearn for the compassion of others.” —Billie Livingston, author of Greedy Little Eyes

Also by Jen Sookfong Lee THE END OF EAST

KNOPF CANADA Photo © Sherri Koop Photography www.RandomHouse.ca

4 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 book prizes B.C. Historical Basran not Federation's an also-ran awards Pupil eclipses Master for he British Columbia Historical Association was established on top fiction award TOctober 12, 1922, and on March 2, 1927, the association was registered HE LIVELIEST APPLAUSE AT THIS under the Societies Act. It was renamed year’s BC Book Prizes awards the British Columbia Historical Federa- Tceremony arose when debut tion on July 29, 1983. The BCHF has novelist Gurjinder Basran was an- 209 institutional members and through nounced as the winner of the Ethel them access to 25,875 individuals. Wilson Fiction prize for Everything Was Visit www.bchistory.ca for details. Good-Bye (Mother Tongue). This year the BCHF presented its His- Basran had earlier won the 2010 torical Writing awards at its annual gen- Search for the Great BC Novel Contest. eral meeting in Powell River in May. First The final judge for that competition, presented in 1983, the Lieutenant-Gov- Jack Hodgins, had his own novel, ernor’s Medal for Historical Writing went The Master of Happy Endings (Thomas to Sylvia Olsen for Working with Allen), appear on the shortlist as a run- Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy and the ner-up to Basran for the Wilson Prize. Cowichan Sweater (Sono Nis $38.95) Publisher Howard White cred- Runners-up were Dan Savard for ited his son, Silas, for alerting him to Images From the Likeness House pay attention to Grant Lawrence’s (Royal BC Museum $39.95) and manuscript Adventures in Solitude: What Dorothy Faulkner, Elaine Park Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other and Cathy Jenks’ Women of Pender Stories from Desolation Sound (Har- Harbour: Their Voices, Their History bour), winner of the Bill Duthie BC (Pender Harbour Living Heritage $45). Booksellers’ Choice Award. Honorable mentions went to The Es- John Vaillant won the Hubert sentials: 150 Great BC Books & Authors Wilson Fiction Evans Non-Fiction Prize for The Tiger: A (Ronsdale $24.95); Voices of British Co- Prize winner True Story of Vengeance and Survival lumbia: Stories from Our Frontier (D&M Gurjinder Basran (Knopf), having $35) and The Railroader’s Wife: Letters will be one of previously won from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway 26 writers at the this year’s B.C. 29th Festival of (Caitlin $24.95) National Award the Written Arts And, yes, for all you proofreaders out for Canadian in Sechelt, there : The BCHF still retains the hyphen Non-Fiction. August 4-7. in Lieutenant-Governor, whereas the Dan Savard hyphen for Governor-General has been won the Roderick dropped by the Governor General’s na- Dan Savard Haig-Brown Re- tional literary awards from Ottawa. gional Prize for Images from the Likeness House (Royal BC Museum). Medal Maggie de Vries won the Sheila A. awarded Egoff Children’s Literature Prize for since Hunger Journeys 1983 for (HarperCollins best Canada). historical Julie Flett writing won the Christie Harris Illustrated UBC PRESS HAD TWO TITLES SHORTLISTED FOR Children’s Litera- The Canada Prize which recognizes ture Prize for Owls scholarly social science and humanities Julie Flett See Clearly at titles; in the Social Sciences category: Night: A Michif Alphabet (Simply Read Alan Gordon’s The Hero and the His- Books). torians: Historiography and the Uses of The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize Jacques Cartier and for Joy Parr’s went to Stephen Collis for On the Sensing Changes: Technologies, Envi- Material (Talonbooks). ronments, and the Everyday, 1953- PHOTOS

The shortest Grant Lawrence 2003. Parr’s book was the winner. and publisher

and most unusual SAWCHUK UBC’s Perverse Cities: Hidden Sub-

speech of the Howard White sidies, Wonky Policy, and Urban Sprawl LAURA evening was given by Pamela Blais was nominated for by George Robinson, Red Lillard, Eric Nicol, For the first time in 27 years, the the Donner Prize, along with D&M’s Oka: Bowering Mourning Dove, Howard O’Hagan, awards were presented from a stage, A Political Crisis and Its Legacy by who received this Hubert Evans, Martin Allerdale without an accompanying dinner. Harry Swain. year’s Lieutenant Grainger, Irene Baird. Thank you.” Linda Cullen, one-half of the com- ’s Polar Im- George Bowering Shelagh D. Grant Governor’s These are all names of deceased B.C. au- edy duo Double Exposure, was inexpli- perative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty Award for Literary Excellence. “I’d like thors. cably absent from her emceeing duties. in North America (D&M $39.95) has to say 60 words. Ethel Wilson, Earle ✍ Double Exposure previously emceed the been nominated for the 2011 J. W. Dafoe Birney, Sheila Watson, Roy Kiyooka, THIS YEAR FIVE OF THE SEVEN B.C. BOOK event in 1995. Book Prize. The Dafoe Book Prize was Jane Rule, Dorothy Livesay, Warren Prizes went to books published in the Attendance for a Thursday evening, inaugurated in 1984 and is awarded an- Tallman, Pat Lowther, David Dawson, province. Non-B.C.-published titles had no-host-bar event at a theatre adjoining nually for outstanding non-fiction writing John Newlove, Gerry Gilbert, Chuck won at least three of the B.C. Book Prizes a high school was modest. More than about Canada, Canadians and the na- Davis, Bruce Serafin, Red Lane, Goh every year from 1998 to 2010. From half of the Kay Meek Theatre in West tion’s role in international affairs. Valued Poh Seng, Harry Robinson, Emily Carr, 1985 to 1997, the average number of Vancouver was empty. For lists of judges at $10,000, it is one of the county’s rich- Robin Blaser, Bunny Wright, PK Page, out-of-province-published winners was and other nominees and further details, est book awards. George Woodcock, Betty Lambert, Brad two. visit www.bcbookprizes.ca

5 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 6 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 cover

Angie Abdou had been writing operational manuals for light-armoured vehicles, tourism blurbs, academic BC articles, and online help—everything BOOKWORLD except what she wanted to do— until an accident triggered STAFF PICK an avalanche of fiction.

CRASHCRASH COURSECOURSE Chaucer goes skiing in Angie Abdou’s PHOTOGRAPHY ANGIE’SANGIE’S The Canterbury Trail / 6:8

WILKE

KEVAN

ONCE UPON A TIME, IT WAS ver since she discovered her first favourite book—One Fish, prompting Ella to try the other sex— and it’s late April. Everyone will be common for people to take Two Fish by Dr. Seuss—Angie Abdou knew she wanted squeezed into Camelot. They will share to write, but it took a near-fatal accident to get her started turns telling stories, in the same their hovel with four dogs, one of which on fiction. The turning point was a head-on collision on the way as contestants take turns doesn’t appear to be house trained. highwayE between Calgary and Crowsnest Pass, about a month before Nearly everyone will drink and/or get singing on American Idol. her thirtieth birthday, at about 100 kilometres per hour. stoned on magic mushroom tea, hash “After surviving that,” she says, “suddenly the logic of stalling on any- brownies, and other concoctions. They’ll That’s how Geoffrey Chaucer’s thing tends to disappear. The prospect of failure or embarrassment doesn’t fight, they’ll puke, they’ll pout, they’ll The Canterbury Tales—modeled on storm and they’ll slumber, encountering seem nearly as dire as the prospect of not ever having tried at all.” The Decameron by Giovanni anger, frustration, disappointment, Boccaccio—became one of the first The driver immediately quit his job as an engineer at Nortel and moved jealousy, passion, elation and boredom. staples of English literature. into a little backwoods hut with no running water or electricity. And Abdou, ✍ The Canterbury Tales is a sometimes who was a passenger in her own car, began writing her first fiction ABDOU CLEARLY KNOWS OF WHAT SHE bawdy conglomeration of 14th century collection, Anything Boys Can Do (Thistledown 2006). writes. Along with her whimsical char- tales told by 29 disparate pilgrims on Abdou’s sports-related first novel The Bone Cage (NeWest 2007) was acter sketches, she includes local tidbits their way to Canterbury. such as a recipe for Mary Jane’s Cook- recently shortlisted for the CBC Canada Reads Award. Now she has Set in the avalanche-ridden moun- ies, a hangover cure and instructions on tains of eastern British Columbia, published her second novel, The Canterbury Trail (Brindle & Glass how to mix a Shotgun. Angie Abdou’s The Canterbury Trail $19.95), reviewed here by Cherie Thiessen. Echoes of Chaucer tend to recede as gradually introduces 14 characters on a the narrative pace picks up along the Chaucerian quest: to take refuge in a This is how some people from gentrified Toronto into Canterbury Trail. Only a few characters back-country skiing hut called Camelot. talk—and live, love and countrified Coalton, getting her seem to match those in The Canterbury All the action occurs near Coalton, a laugh—particularly within the squeezes in wherever she can. Tales. Lanny is a miller and there’s a fictional community that could easily be brash ski culture of risk takers Her female competition is miller who tells a tale in Chaucer. The mistaken for Fernie, where Abdou lives. who partake of marijuana and Shanny, a hot young hitchhik- ribald Wife of Bath correlates only All characters will follow a wilderness booze. Some locals in the ing snowboarder. slightly to Abdou’s lusty Alison. The sto- route forged by a disaffected hermit Fernie area have taken offense Cherie Add to the mix, heavy drink- rytelling of the characters tends to fizzle named Heinz who detests the powder at such crudity appearing in THIESSEN ing snowmobilers Kevin and his due to fatigue, drugs and alcohol. Only puffs. print. friend, Frederik, who both Lanny completes his story of an encoun- Although the reclusive Heinz abhors ✍ drive trucks for the local mill, and ter with an angry, mother moose. the noise and the messes that visitors and IN THE CANTERBURY TRAIL, WE FIRST MEET Kevin’s second wife, Claudette. This amounts to a gnarly, original fic- their dogs leave behind, he has none- Three Musketeers in toques; a trio of Back-country skiers include Michael, tional journey. Abdou’s second novel is theless erected a van-sized sign mapping intense skiers nicknamed Loco, F Bomb, a real estate developer, his very pregnant not the first literary work to emulate the area from the trailhead right over and SOR. SOR stands for Stud on Rock- wife, Janet, and Michael’s friend, Lanny. Chaucer’s classic, but it could be the the summit and on to Camelot. ets. Loco refers to someone who is a lo- Add two of Janet’s lesbian friends, the most uninhibited and most fun. He has also erected signposts and cal. And F Bomb is a First Nations man. earth mother, Cosmos, and her lover, 978-1-897142-50-9 named the route The Canterbury Trail. And they swear a lot. Ella, who use snowshoes. Youthful ski-bums prefer to mawkishly They take along a big city journalist, It’s a small town—Ella was Kevin’s Cherie Thiessen is an avid skier who call it The C— Trail. Alison, who is documenting her descent first wife before he left her for Claudette, reviews fiction from Pender Island.

7 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 District of Sechelt

tel: 604.885.9631 toll free: 1.800.565.9631 www.writersfestival.ca

8 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 cover

BC BOOKWORLD: Why the fasci- recipes. “You have a lot of young read- nation with Chaucer? “Choosing a B.C. press was, ers—is that the message you want to ANGIE ABDOU: Chaucer is possi- send out?” bly the very first English writer to have a My answer was that we live in a soci- true interest in character. Before his work, in part, an awareness that ety where access to information is not the characters tended to be flat representa- issue—instead we need to teach young tions of certain sins (Sloth or Pride, say) it’s important to be known adults what to do with information and or certain virtues. Chaucer uses charac- how to think about it critically. If young ters to represent particular classes in his people want recipes for drugs, they can medieval society, but he quickly shows first at home.” find far worse with a simple click on that these people cannot be contained Google. Drugs are a part of mountain within their designated roles. culture, and they are a part of this book. BCBW: So you’re doing the same, but BCBW: Does it matter if some readers with contemporary people. ANGIE ABDOU INTERVIEW haven’t read The Canterbury Tales? ABDOU: Exactly. I have ski bums, ABDOU: Not at all. rednecks, hippies, developers. I hope the BCBW: I wonder if Chaucer encoun- ber, it’s a tale about sinners using a pil- BCBW: Why did you choose a B.C. reader discovers these characters cannot tered any similar feedback in his day? grimage as an opportunity to indulge in publisher? easily be contained within their labels. ABDOU: We don’t know. But one their favourite sins. ABDOU: Around the time I was de- Chaucer used a pilgrimage to bring to- thing that might surprise people today BCBW: That works as a good expla- ciding what to do with this novel, I read gether diverse elements of medieval so- is the pure wildness of The Canterbury nation for the drugs and swearing in a piece in B.C. BookWorld about writers ciety. In that way, Chaucer had an Tales. Because it is a classic text, people your book. abandoning B.C. just as they were be- opportunity to satirize a cross-section of sometimes assume it must be stuffy and ABDOU: Well, let’s just say I take my coming successful. There is, the article his medieval society. So I asked myself— serious and boring. Though tone from Chaucer. Just because a novel said, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy what type of journey would bring to- Chaucer’s text does includes drug abuse does not mean that about B.C. writers being doomed to re- gether diverse components of my have serious content, it endorses drug abuse. My husband main mid-listers... This piece struck a community? taken as a whole it asked me at one point if I was really go- chord with me. It made me feel loyal to BCBW: What other parallels did you is one of the ing to include those marijuana cookie the Western Canadian writers, editors use? bawdiest and and publishers who had been so helpful ABDOU: The Canterbury Trail takes most ribald texts in the various phases of producing my place in April. That’s an “of course!” for of the English lan- first two books. So I decided to try a B.C. anyone who knows Chaucer. But here guage. Remem- publisher. After all, The Canterbury Trail it is spring snow rather than spring thaw is a very B.C. novel. that brings everyone together. Also, Fernie is very isolated. It’s a BCBW: So would you describe The good twelve-hour drive from Van- Canterbury Trail as a social satire? couver. I thought going with a press ABDOU: Satire implies a certain dis- in Victoria would link me into the tance from the material—a looking in B.C. publishing world. I also chose at and a poking fun of, a highlighting of Brindle & Glass because of the pub- the shortcomings of others. I have no such lisher, Ruth Linka. I trust her ab- distance from this material. So instead solutely. We were undergraduates of satire, I have been referring to The together at the University of Canterbury Trail as a black comedy or Regina. I remember sitting next a tragicomedy or a comic-tragedy. If to her, in about 1989, for a anyone has a better label, I would be Feminist Theory course taught happy to hear it. by Joan Givner. I wonder BCBW: What do you say to read- what we would’ve thought then ers who might be offended by some if someone could’ve told us that of the language in your novel? Es- one day she’d own a press and pecially the C-word. would publish my third book? ABDOU: I am completely sur- BCBW: Now you’re on the prised by how offended some cover of Quill & Quire, Cana- readers are. I guess Germaine da’s national publishing trade Greer was right when she magazine, having not opted for claimed “it is one of the few re- Toronto. maining words in the English lan- ABDOU: At times it feels pretty guage with a genuine power to weird. One of the weirdest mo- shock.” It’s in the original Chaucer. ments of the Canada Reads compe- He refers to queynte for a misplaced tition was picking up the National Post kiss that’s meant to land on an in- and reading Mark Medley’s de- tended lover’s lips but lands instead, scription of me as “virtually unknown.” well, somewhere else. It is, therefore, I knew what he meant, of course, but at one of the oldest words to describe a the same time I thought, “Oh yeah! Well, part of the human body—a part on Mark Medley is virtually unknown every woman, and the place from where I come from!” which we all come. So if you find your- Fernie is a long way from Toronto. self recoiling at it, you might ask why it Choosing a B.C. press was, in part, an should be any more offensive than, say, awareness that it’s important to be the word “kneecap.” known first at home. I have to say, my BCBW: Were you using it mindfully? proudest moment so far came when I ABDOU: Of course. One reason for saw the book featured in March’s Hot the C-word’s predominance in this book List right here in the Fernie Fix. To know relates to the feminization of landscape. that Fernie’s young hip crowd is reading At an earlier stage, this novel was a disser- this novel and enjoying it made me feel, tation project, and the best moment of for just a moment, pretty darn cool. that process was when an examiner de- clared: “Nature is a character in this novel Montreal Canadiens hockey … and she is ANG-RY!” But once a book player Georges Laraque is published, a writer no longer has con- argued on behalf of Angie trol over it. The Canterbury Trail is now Abdou’s first novel as one of out there in the wide world for each the five finalists for CBC’s reader to make of it what he or she will. Canada Reads competition.

9 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 Read the winners of the 27th annual BC Book Prizes

ethel wilson fiction prize dorothy livesay poetry prize sheila a. egoff children’s Supported by Friesens and Webcom Supported by BC Teachers’ Federation literature prize Gurjinder Basran Stephen Collis Supported by the BC Library Association Everything Was Good-Bye On the Material Maggie de Vries Mother Tongue Publishing Talonbooks Hunger Journeys HarperCollins Canada roderick haig-brown christie harris illustrated regional prize children’s literature prize bill duthie booksellers’ Supported by Transcontinental Printing Supported by Kate Walker & Company choice award Dan Savard Julie Flett Supported by the BC Booksellers’ Association Images from the Owls See Clearly at Night: A Grant Lawrence and George Bowering Likeness House Harbour Publishing Michif Alphabet (Lii Yiiboo recipient of the 2011 Royal BC Museum Nayaapiwak lii Swer: L’alfabet Adventures in Solitude: lieutenant governor’s hubert evans non-fiction prize di Michif) What Not to Wear to a Nude award for literary excellence Simply Read Books Supported by AbeBooks Potluck and Other Stories from Established in 2003 by the Honourable John Vaillant Desolation Sound Iona Campagnolo to recognize British The Tiger: A True Story of Columbia writers who have contributed to Vengeance and Survival the development of literary excellence in Knopf Canada the Province. Win books and learn more at www.bcbookprizes.ca

We gratefully acknowledge the support of our many sponsors and supporters: AbeBooks | Bank of Montreal | BC BookWorld | BC Library Association | BC Teachers’ Federation | Chatelaine Magazine | Coast Hotels | Friesens | Government House Foundation | Government of British Columbia | Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund | Hamber Foundation | Hawkair | Independent Booksellers Association | International Web exPress | Kate Walker and Company | National Car Rental | Rebus Creative | Rio Tinto Alcan | Thrifty Foods | Tourism Vancouver | Transcontinental Printing | Vancouver Kidsbooks | The Vancouver Sun | Webcom

The Opening Act Spit Delaney’s Canadian Theatre History, 1945–1953 Island ½ Susan McNicoll Drawing on interviews with actors of the period, McNicoll Jack Hodgins explores such companies as Everyman in Vancouver, New Play Society in Toronto, and Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Montreal. 978-1-55380-113-9 7-1/2 x 10 280 pp 55 b&w images $24.95 Beckett Soundings ½ Inge Israel In these poems, Inge Israel slips into the mind of Samuel Beckett to explore the sources of his novels, plays and poems, especially his belief that language (mis)informs all that we know. 978-1-55380-112-2 6 x 9 100 pp $15.95 Torn from Troy ½ Patrick Bowman In this rewriting of Homer’s Odyssey, Alexi, a young Trojan boy, is captured by the hated Greeks and encounters the uncanny domains of the Lotus Eaters and the Cyclops. This collection of short stories — winner of the Eaton’s Book Prize and a finalist for the Governor 978-1-55380-110-8 5-1/4 x 7-5/8 200 pp $11.95 General’s Award — started Jack Hodgins off on his award-studded literary career. Broken Trail ½ Jean Rae Baxter “Jack Hodgins’ stories do one of the best things fiction Jean Rae Baxter explores the world of a young white boy during can do — they reveal the extra dimension of the real the American Revolution who is adopted by the Oneida and who place, they light up the crazy necessities of real life.” must decide whether he will become native or remain white. — ALICE MUNRO Or is there a third and better way?

978-1-55380-111-5 6 x 9 200 pp $18.95 978-1-55380109-2 5-1/4 x 7-5/8 246 pp $11.95

Available from your favourite bookstore or order from LitDistCo Ronsdale Press Visit our website at www.ronsdalepress.com

10 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 south asia

BANGLADESH: InnocenceInnocence comescomes beforebefore aa fallfall

Cover art from The Innocent Corner

BY CHERIE THIESSEN subsequent life in Vancouver, the birth Peggy Herring lived in Bangladesh for two years, of her daughter, widowhood at 39, a IX A LITTLE MEDDLING and spent several years in Nepal and India. Set in move to Salt Spring Island, and a subse- with a whole lot of quent estrangement from her daughter. Bangladesh, The Innocent Corner is her first novel. But there are some storytelling holes naiveté and you can that left me frustrated with the plot. I M still don’t know, for example, what hap- have a dangerous concoction. If There’s a great deal more to this story, fronted by a furious Hasan in the audi- pened to those lovers. this is the lesson Peggy Her- but I can’t give it all away. Once she’s ence, she abandons her talk and then Setting fiction in a politically volatile ring wants us to learn in This In- safely back in America, Robin still doesn’t casually goes off to find her host family country at a significant moment in his- seem to get it. She waits for letters from with still no apparent idea of the recep- tory is a good idea, and Herring has a nocent Corner (Oolican $19.95), it’s Luna and the Chowdhury household, tion she’ll get. good ear for dialogue, but making Robin well-illustrated in the character of seemingly surprised when no commu- ✍ so unattractively naïve proves alienating. a 20-year-old American exchange nication from them is forthcoming. ALTERNATING BETWEEN EAST PAKISTAN It would take just a few tweaks here and By the time Robin returns to Dhaka then and Bangladesh now, sometimes there to give us a narrator we want to student, Robin Rowe, who is study- thirty years later, in order to give a pres- awkwardly, this story fills in gaps in Rob- hang out with. 978-088982-268-9 ing in East Pakistan. entation at the invitation of the Bangla- in’s personal history: Her return to the American Women’s Friendship Society, States, her falling in love with a draft Cherie Thiessen reviews from It’s 1970, and there’s social unrest in she still has her head in the sand. Con- dodger while on vacation in Canada, her Pender Island. Dhaka. East Pakistan is about to erupt and eventually reform itself into the world’s 139th country—Bangladesh. Its PUNJAB: FIRST DAUGHTERS IN CANADA genocidal struggle for independence has been called one of the shortest and ith the release of Zhindagee: Voices of Ca- bloodiest wars of modern times. nadian Indian First Daughters ($39.95), Robin has been boarding in Dhaka editor/publisher Mahinder Kaur Doman with the wealthy Chowdhury family, be- W has gathered an anthology of self-written Manhas coming fast friends with their daughter, stories by some of the first South Asian Indian fe- Luna, rapidly estranging herself from the males to be born in Canada, from 1920 to 1950. fiery son, Hasan, and romantically in- The parents of these women were pioneers from volving herself with his friend, Shaheed. Punjab India. The mother of each was affected by the Fresh from the United States, Robin exclusion of South Asian females, even though they holds firm to her immature ideals, de- were British subjects, from entering Canada until after void of cultural sensitivity. She encour- 1920. ages Luna to run away with her lover to “These women have never been acknowledged in avoid an arranged marriage, and moti- any type of history,” says Mahinder, “and nor were vates Shaheed to involve himself in a po- their mothers.” The photographs have never been pub- litical turmoil he was inclined to avoid. lished and there is a Punjabi-English glossary. She refuses to listen to the Many of the stories emanate from Paldi, the Van- Chowdhury’s urgings to leave their in- couver Island mill town named after a town called Paldi in Punjab, the birthplace of Mayo Singh Hockey creasingly violent country, postponing a who co-owned the Mayo Lumber Company. An exception is the memoir of Deljeet Kaur Manak pioneer trip to the airport until she puts not only Willie O’Ree, O’Ree, who was raised in nearby Duncan, B.C. She has been living in the USA since 1969, the Hasan in danger, but the runaway lov- his daughter year she married New Brunswick-born Willie O’Ree of the Boston Bruins, the first black man to ers, as well. Worse, she deliberately ac- Chandra and play in the National Hockey League (in 1958), but she still considers Canada her home. his wife cuses an innocent servant of theft, “My hope is that others will publish more stories of women from this time span,” says Mahinder. Deljeet reminiscent of Khaled Hosseini’s Contact: www.zhindagee.ca for more info. 978-0-9811913-0-0 Kite Runner.

11 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 lContributeiterary your info for FREE listings to www.bookworldexpress.com events A new service provided by BC BookWorld

Subject to Change to Montreal to care for her sick father, Holocaust. Renee recalls that Vera came by Renee Rodin and Bread and Salt (1996), a collection into her life as one of the few people that (Talonbooks $18.95) of prose poems about her childhood ex- she remembers her mother giving in- periences in Montreal. stant respect to. LAUNCH With its intriguingly subtle title, Sub- Renee demonstrates her affinity for ject to Change has a much broader wing Kitsilano through the poems she ENTER THE OLD BILLY BISHOP LEGION span. These are sophisticated reflections, chooses to read. It’s refreshing to be able Hall in Vancouver being somewhat without being showy about it. As Stan to mentally engage with the sights she is Iuncertain as to where the book Persky puts it, “The intensity, care speaking of, even if it is the thrift store launch will take place, making my way and wit that Renee Rodin brought to on Broadway and MacDonald. towards the bar to ask an employee. In- years of cultural and other activisms is She closes with “A Naif’s Story,” a stead, I am greeted by Renee (pro- now honed into a distinctive voice— poem that reflects upon the eight years nounced ‘Ree-knee’) Rodin warmly funny, relaxed, passionately intelligent, (1986-1994) she spent running the shaking my hand and introducing her- deeply attentive to reality.” R2B2 bookstore on West 4th avenue in self, as if she is simply helping The Billy Bishop Legion Hall Kits. That bookstore was dedicated to with the event rather than being is a past and present meeting keeping the Vancouver literary scene the feature of it. ground for war veterans. Today both alive and personal. She admits to Born and raised in Montreal, it’s a meeting ground for liter- her audience that R2B2 was more about where she gained a Bachelor of ary veterans. At the legion, most the books, and those who read the books, Arts degree from Sir George of the attendees seem to know than the business itself. Williams University, Rodin Roxana each other quite well. The at- As literary den mother, past and moved to Vancouver during the mosphere is cozy and familiar, present, Renee Rodin has concluded Sub- 1960s, later operating R2B2 NECSULESCU like the bar itself. ject to Change with a list of more than PHOTO Bookstore in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I talk to poet Maxine Gadd, au- one hundred writers and artists who par-

As much of her writing concerns thor of Subway Under Byzantium (2008), TWIGG ticipated in events at her bookstore. That family, it’s pertinent to note she is a who tells me how Kitsilano is much dif- Renee Rodin opened R2B2 in 1986. list is preceded by an update on the lives mother of three. Her children are shown ferent now than it once was, and how of 31 infants who have, between 1968 with her on the cover of her new book, happy she is to see that the Billy Bishop from her seat. Renee then reads us a and 2010, been raised in the same beau- Subject to Change, an autobiographi- Legion Hall is still up and running. poem titled “The Real Deal,” which is tiful wicker basket that she bought for cal sampling that is dedicated to her sis- Before Renee starts reading excerpts both dedicated to, and about, Vera and her daughter Joey, on Portobello Road, ter. from Subject to Change, she informs us her husband Josef. Vera was awarded in London, in 1968. 9780889226449 Her previous books are Ready for that it is her dear friend Vera the Order of Canada in 2005 for trav- Freddy (2005), a memoir reflecting the Slyomovics’ birthday, and there elling across the country conducting Roxana Necsulescu is a contributing period of her life when she moved back Vera is nodding and smiling back at her talks about her experiences during the editor to BC BookWorld Express.

Feminism For Real by Jessica Yee (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives $15) LAUNCH

HEN I ARRIVE A HALF-AN-HOUR IN advance for Jessica WYee’s launch of Feminism For Real, Vancouver’s Rhizome Café is already full of guests, lounging as if it is their communal living room, on a rainy, Thursday night. This place some- how retains the ambience of a mod- ern cottage turned into an art studio. To open the event, Terry Azak presents a song to the beat of his drum, honouring the bear and the mother; Angela Marie MacDougall, ex- ecutive director of Battered Women’s Support Services (bwss.org), tells the audience that one cannot speak about violence against women without taking into account the colonial legacy of the murder and abuse of Indigenous PHOTO women. Here Yee, Here Yee: The stage is now set for Jessica The stage is set at the

Yee, editor of Feminism For Real, to NECSULESCU Rhizome Cafe for Jessica Yee’s

recognize the ever-widening scope of Feminism for Real.

the term ‘feminism.’ Of Chinese and ROXANA Mohawk descent, Yee self-identifies tim-centered vocabulary that feminism It is bracing content, punctuated by pervises sexual education programs. as a “two-spirit indigenous hip-hop has tended to adopt, and replace it embraces. Jessica hugs each In 2009, Jessica Yee received the feminist reproductive justice freedom with a more positive lingo. Her part- speaker before they return to their 2009 YWCA Young Woman of Distinc- fighter.” ner Pat reads two poems from the seats. The evening ends on a hopeful tion Award and most recently a 2010 Feminism for Real is an ensem- collection on male feminism by yet decidedly introspective note. Re- Harmony Award. 978-1-926888-49-1 ble of short pieces written by a variety Robert Animikii Horton, “Male productive Justice Freedom Fighters —Roxana Necsulescu of passionate voices telling of their ex- Feminist” and “Invisible Activists.” The of the World, Unite… the struggle con- periences with racism, sexism and co- older sister of Shaunga Tagore tinues. For more reports of literary lonialism. reads Shaunga’s “A Slam on Femi- Jessica Yee is also the founder events in B.C., visit the new BookWorld Express site at Members of the audience take turns nism in Academia,” an account of the and executive director of the Native www.bookworldexpress.com reading from the anthology. The presi- hypocrisy of letting in ethnic students Youth Sexual Health Network dent of the Native Women’s Associa- to graduate programs in order to fill a (nativeyouthsexualhealth.com), the Organizers of literary events can submit info for free listings on the tion of Canada, Beverly Jacobs, quota without adapting to the students’ only indigenous sexual-health organi- site’s calendar. speaks of the need to change the vic- needs. zation in North America, where she su-

12 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 13 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 gulf islands BY SUSAN YATES GABRIOLA MYSTERY

HAVE THE USUAL ASSORTMENT S A FOLLOW-UP TO THEIR DEBUT MYSTERY, of bird identification A Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island, George Szanto and guides that any West Coast HALLELUJAH Sandy Frances Duncan have co- nature lover uses to discern written Always Kiss the Corpse on & PASS THE BIRD SEED Whidbey Island (Touchwood $24.95). aI finch from a sparrow, but I don’t Both feature West Coast sleuths Kyra consider myself a birder. Neither ceptions of the natural world is always a from songwriter Carly Simon: “The Rachel and Noel Franklin of Islands In- good remedy for the problems inherent sound of birds stops the noise in my vestigations International. did Sharon McInnes until in a rural dwelling. mind.” McInnes, a former counselor, In the second novel, a grieving mother she moved from the city to Up Close & Personal has inspired me explains: “Birding is a much safer, much bends over to kiss her son’s corpse at a funeral home view- Gabriola Island. to observe and relate to the creatures in more life-affirming antidote to all kinds my own back yard as never before. Teen- of stress-related conditions.” Safer than ing, only to shriek: As a relatively short anthology of es- age towhees squawking and most drugs, and “That’s not Sandro!” Having supposedly says originally written for a local island splashing in the bird bath possibly more died of a heroin over- newspaper, McInnes’ Up Close & Per- have me mesmerized and life-affirming dose, the body of sonal, Confessions of a Backyard Birder completely oblivious to than exercis- Whidbey Island Gen- (Isle of the Arts Publishing $21.95) is whatever I was doing ing in an in- George Szanto eral Hospital nurse probably the only book (not including before I looked out my door gym. Sandro Vasiliadis is suddenly missing, my daily staple of children’s picture back window. How 978-0-9867453-0-0 and his mother is convinced he is still books) that I have ever read in one sit- much time elapses be- alive. The detectives’ inquiries lead them ting. Each chapter describes that special fore my attention goes Former li- deep into Sandro’s life and to a medical connection between humans and nature back to my chores, I brarian clinic that specializes in transgendering. that happens when humans become don’t know, but the Susan Yates Szanto speaks four languages and birdwatchers. image of those soggy, writes and lives on Gabriola Island. In Szanto’s lat- “I found birds,” McInnes writes, “in oversized fuzzballs organizes lit- est island-based novel, The Tartarus much the same way, it seems, that some splashing water every- erary events House on Crab (Brindle & Glass people find religion.” where, and looking like from Gabriola. $19.95), photographer Jack Tartarus re- McInnes provides bird tales that something only a mother turns to his family’s old home to tear it leave the reader bemused, delighted, towhee could down. But the people of Crab Island, in- and connected to the natural world. My love, brings a silly cluding his sister, and Turtle—the is- favourite is Bird Seed in my Boots that grin to my face. land’s self-proclaimed guardian—and a involves mice (with which I’m all too fa- The chapter beautiful woman he knew long ago, are miliar) and birds, and the trials of learn- Birds: Better angrily opposed to his plan. Whidbey 978-926741-05-5 ing to live in harmony with nature. Than Prozac be- Sharon McInnes Tartarus 9781897142530 Being able to laugh at our own miscon- gins with a line

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15 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 reviews NON-FICTION SEEING Double or Nothing: The Flying Fur Buyer of D’Arcy grew up in the sad- Anahim Lake by D’Arcy Christensen dle making these overland jour- (Caitlin $24.95) neys back and forth between URING THE THIRTY YEARS I Bella Coola and the Chilcotin worked as a journalist Plateau with his family. During Din the Chilcotin and the winters he attended school Bella Coola Valley, there wasn’t in Bella Coola, and spent the a more colourful character in summers on the family ranch the region than Anahim Lake near Anahim Lake. store owner D’Arcy Christensen. DOUBLE On his mother’s side, The front of his general store OR NOTHING D’Arcy’s grandfather, John Clay- was emblazoned with a multicol- DOUBLE ton, was also an entrepreneur. oured mural of galloping horses, He was the last Hudson’s Bay and above it were the words: “If Factor in Bella Coola. When the we don’t have it; then you don’t historic fur-trading company need it.” pulled up stakes on the Central When I first met him in the Coast in the 1880s, John Clayton late 1970s, I owned a trapline in bought up the HBC assets and the Chilcotin south of Tatla was the major landholder in the Lake. I occasionally sold fur to valley when the Norwegians ar- him. During the winter months rived in 1894. he was often away flying his bush So D’Arcy’s roots go back to plane equipped with skis buying the earliest of colonial times in fur and delivering groceries to Bella Coola, and to the earliest people living in remote locations European settlement of the West in a three hundred kilometre ra- Chilcotin around Anahim Lake. dius of Anahim Lake. Penning his stories, D’Arcy In those days, D’Arcy scratched into the far reaches of Christensen was known far and D’Arcy Christensen his memory to dig up tales of no- wide as the Flying Fur Buyer. D’Arcy Christensen table characters he shared that Business was simple. “Anyone likedliked toto amuseamuse himselfhimself inin thethe isolated landscape with. Lestor who’d wave a mink skin at me,” storestore withwith hishis coincoin tosstoss offer:offer: and Mickey Dorsey, Pan Phillips, he says, “I’d land and buy their Fred Engebretson, Maddy Jack, fur.” aa customercustomer couldcould betbet himhim doubledouble Jane Lehman, Tommy Holte, Ten years after he sold his oror nothingnothing forfor anythinganything Alfred Bryant and Thomas retail store in 2000 to a distant Squinas were all legends in their relative, Norm McLean, inin thethe store.store. own right. They were also per- Christensen moved to Williams sonal friends with whom D’Arcy Lake and released his memoirs, milled lumber, ranched, Double or Nothing: The Flying Fur trapped, gambled, and served in Buyer of Anahim Lake. There his store. could be no other title. He says a strong motivation D’Arcy liked to amuse him- for writing his book was to pre- self in the store with his coin toss serve the unique stories, sayings offer: a customer could bet him and memories of the people he double or nothing for anything shared his life with in this rustic in the store, everything from a outpost region of B.C. chocolate bar worth $1.48 to a The cover photo of the book whole grocery order worth sev- depicting six-year-old D’Arcy eral hundred dollars. D’Arcy told me Christensen, founded Lake, and opened a branch of duded up with chaps, cowboy One day I got a call from The later that wasn’t quite A.C. Christensen Ltd. the store there, as well. boots and hat, with a cigarette Vancouver Sun to drive up from true. He said he was in Bella Coola in 1898, In those days there was no in his mouth, is bound to create Tatlayoko Valley to take a pic- always careful not to shortly after he and his road connecting Bella Coola some controversy. He says the ture of D’Arcy flipping double gamble for any amount bride, Maret, arrived Valley to the Chilcotin Plateau. cigarette was his mother’s idea or nothing for a beaver pelt with he could not afford to with the Norwegian In fact, there was no road link- to make the picture interesting. a customer in his store. lose, and to scrutinize colonists in 1894 via a ing Anahim Lake to the provin- An avowed anti-smoker, D’Arcy The photo was published in the character of those Sage circuitous route from cial highway grid either. makes a statement to that effect the June 30, 1986 edition of The he entered into these Norway to Minnesota, Andy transported all the on the back cover. Vancouver Sun, accompanied by games of chance with. BIRCHWATER then finally to B.C. goods for his store by steamship And, yes, he will flip double a story by business columnist, ✫ D’Arcy’s dad, Andy Christ- to Bella Coola, then by truck up or nothing for the $24.95 book. Mike Grenby, who stated: “This WHEN D’ARCY CHRISTENSEN SOLD HIS ensen, bought the store from the valley to the end of the road So far, he says, he’s breaking store owner likes doing business store, the business had been in Adolph in the 1920s. A few years near Stuie, and used packhorses about even. 9781894759472 by flipping a coin. He’ll play any the family for more than 100 later, Andy and his wife, Dorothy to ship the goods the rest of the game you can name for any years. Christensen, purchased the Cless way up the Precipice Trail to Sage Birchwater is BCBW’s Cariboo- amount you can count.” His grandfather, Adolph Pocket Ranch near Anahim Anahim Lake. Chilcotin correspondent.

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16 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 17 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 18 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 a forum for & about writers # 43 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 • [email protected]

all of whom nurtured my growing interest in LOOKOUT the word. As a doctoral student, I met Jon LOOKOUT Furberg whose energy and enthusiasm for poetry was infectious, and who, along with a few friends, had started a small publishing venture, Pulp Press. As early as this, 1971 or ’72, the idea of publishing intrigued me. About this time I wrote a letter to Robert Kroetsch, whose novel The Studhorse Man I had just read. It did all sorts of things other Canadian works didn’t do and I rushed to tell him so. One year later I was teaching at Malaspina and he was one of my first guest readers. Over the next four years I arranged fifty- two events at the college, most of them liter- ary, although I did invite Liona Boyd to play her guitar and Maurice Good, an Irish actor, to do his one-man, west-end-of- London show based on Samuel Beckett. I had done my thesis on Beckett, so this was an obvious engagement for me. The list of poets and novelists who made their way to Vancouver Island still surprises and pleases me, but I want to mention two who became hugely influential in my pub- lishing life. Bob Kroetsch and I became good friends and remain so to this day. He is my daugh- ter’s godfather but in a curious way also my godfather. At the time he was running an important avant-garde journal called Bound- Ron Smith, Pat Smith ary 2 out of Binghamton, New York. In 1974 and Bob Kroetsch at he was visiting and, after a few drinks, con- Vancouver International vinced me I should start a publishing com- airport, 1972. pany. As an incentive to get into publishing, Bob told me he would give me his first book of poetry, The Stone Hammer Poems. Little did I realize what I was getting into, nor did I appreciate how lucky I was to have this as a first title. The other person who had been a part of the read- OOLICHAN ORIGINS ing series and who immediately came to my aid and provided me with unwavering support was Robin In April at the Arbutus Club in Vancouver, Ron Smith, Skelton. He also offered me a title for publication. I owe Robin a great debt. We spent many evenings the founder of Oolichan Books, accepted the Gray Campbell over a bottle of Jamesons’ Irish whiskey discussing the Distinguished Service Award for his contributions to the publishing plight and pleasures of publishing. I took a semester off from teaching and printed industry and recalled how his press was founded in the early 1970s. the first four Oolichan titles in the evenings on the Malaspina College press. But I had no idea how to T ALL BEGAN WHEN UBC QUITE RIGHTLY ASKED and read. Often I would hear John shuffling past, bind the books so Robin suggested Morriss Printing me to leave the university as a student. I had calling, “Ron, Ron, there’s a truck to unload. Where in Victoria. Very quickly Dick Morriss became a spent my first two years on campus as a Phys. the f— are you?” Surprisingly he never saw the smoke dear friend and did much to help me learn the print- Ed. student and for the most part had only winding up and along the floor joists above me. ing and publishing businesses. learned the rules of bridge and how to per- John Newlove did more than recommend books. During this period I met Margaret form a somersault in mid-air. Oh, and I also He wanted to talk about them. Mostly I listened. And Reynolds, who was working for Sono Nis Press. played on the rugby team. what an education. A few weeks before John died, Too quickly we forget those who have made major IAs an academic I was a total failure. After a sum- contributions to our culture and I would like us to Pat and I were in Ottawa and spent a day with mer of working up north, I returned to Vancouver John—we had remained friends for all those years— remember Robin and Dick this evening for all they and managed to land a full-time job at the UBC Book- and I told him about my little hideout in the UBC did for the literary arts in BC. store. This was 1962 or ’63. Three rather disreputa- Bookstore. He laughed and confessed he had never Writers are clearly the life blood of publishing and ble characters were assigned to help me: Claude figured out where I had disappeared to. I am indebted to all the authors who have submitted Breeze (painter), Jamie Reid (poet) and John I only published two of John’s books but The Green manuscripts to Oolichan Books down through the Newlove (poet). Through one or all of them, or Plain remains one of my favourites. years. Yes, some have been a pain in the ass, but I else through Bill Duthie (bookseller) or Dick Over the next few years I hung out on the edges suspect a few feel that way about me. Morris (printer), I eventually met the remarkable of things, going to readings, etc, and then going back Oolichan owes its success to a long list of very tal- artist and book designer Tak Tanabe. to university to get my degree in English. I had the ented people. At different times, Rhonda Bai- John Newlove talked about poetry and history, good fortune to hear some amazing writers, all of ley, Ursula Vaira and Hiro Boga were recommended books I should read; and Jamie Reid whom “turned me on” to the craft of writing in some instrumental in keeping the operation going on a day- talked politics and constantly reminded me of the way. Leonard Cohen came through with his to-day basis. In recent times, David Manicom, many ways in which I was being exploited. guitar and gave a concert in the new education build- Bill New, P.K. Page and John Pass have In the basement of the bookstore, I built a little ing. Eventually I would hear Charles Olson, brought the press national attention. hideaway out of duotang cartons. I piled them up to Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Basil Now Oolichan Books is under the leadership and the ceiling, leaving a small space inside where I hid a Bunting, and Seamus Heaney. guidance of Randal Macnair, of Fernie, who has chair and ashtray. I could slip a carton out and crawl There were many other writers brought in by brought new life and vision to the press. I feel blessed into my space. There in my den I would sit, smoke Warren Tallman and George McWhirter, to have been the recipient of so much good fortune.

19 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SUMMER • 2011 ggrraaphicphic nonovvelsels PORTRAIT OF THE ARIST AS A LISTENER A graphic novel about art and politics and a long forgotten election that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Silence of the Milkman The first of a planned two-volume set of ’s Reid Fleming: World's BY KRISTIN BOMBA in her mind. Along the way, she meets various David Boswell Toughest Milkman (IDW $29.99) collects people who affect her life. EIGHING IN AT A METICULOUS all the Reid Fleming comics together. The 312 In Austria, she meets Tomas, a man interested release includes an introduction by Acad- pages of original art, David in the people behind the works of art, specifi- W emy Award-winning film director Jonathan cally destructive people who were artists or poets (Silence of the Lambs). Lester’s The Listener (Arbeiter Ring (Hitler was a painter; Stalin and Mao were po- Demme This year, Boswell was inducted into The $19.95) is a graphic novel that manages ets). Tomas and Louise visit a concentration camp Giants of the North, the Canadian cartooning where Louise struggles to absorb the atmosphere, Hall of Fame in Toronto. to combine the rise of Hitler with a con- but she feels unable to comprehend the magni- David Boswell began his cartooning ca- temporary woman’s search for meaning tude of what occurred there. As they journey reer in 1977 at the Georgia Straight news- through Europe, they discuss how they became paper in Vancouver. 978-1600108020 in the great art of Europe. artists, and what inspires them. The Listener, on its historical and political level, They discuss the nature of the art (Do people Love it and Leavitt revisits how Adolf Hitler was one of the origi- see what they’re meant to see, learn what they’re ’s graphic memoir Tangles: nal spin doctors, turning his party’s narrow elec- meant to learn, or see what they already under- Sarah Leavitt A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother toral victory in the state of Lippe, in 1933, into stand?) and the possible obligations of artists to and Me (Freehand $23.96) tells the story an alleged “massive victory” that enabled him to the world. Of particular note is a story about of her mother developing Alzheimer’s and be appointed chancellor of Germany, by Presi- Orson Welles who was once asked to run her family’s emotional reactions that ranged dent Hindenburg, just two weeks later. for the senate and declined, whereupon Joseph from shock, denial, anger, frustration to On an intimate and personal level, Louise— McCarthy won that election. trouble and the Lippe election fight may be his artists so dangerous that so many had had to die. new sculpture that is the culmination of all horrific and hope. The family the listener of the title—takes a sabbatical tour ✍ last. The Nazi party throws everything they have Rather than blaming Louise for Vann’s death, she has learned on her journey through Eu- saddening. manages to find of the museums of Europe, trying to overcome THE RISE OF HITLER IS TOLD THROUGH THE into the campaign. His stormtroopers arrive from Walter has come to tell her that Vann was in- rope, and all her “listenings.” Such propa- moments of happi- guilt and sadness after a young activist, inspired memories of an older couple that Louise meets, across Germany, converging on Lippe. DNVP spired by her work. Walter reassures Louise that Louise is more comfortable expressing and ex- ganda ignited an ness that reveal the by one of Louise’s sculptures, fell to his death while Marie and Rudolph. In flashback scenes, Marie campaign posters are covered over with Nazi post- Vann was solely responsible for his own death. plaining herself through drawing than talk, and entire nation and mo- poignant bonds be- hanging a protest banner off the Woodward’s W and Rudolph recall working for a newspaper in ers. Local rallies are manipulated and members Louise is moved by the story and takes solace from I’m much the same with the written word. She is tivated the murder of millions. tween mother and tower in Vancouver. She receives letters blaming the conservative state of Lippe, in Germany, in of the opposition are brutally attacked at their Walter’s absolution of her culpability. more of a listener, an observer, absorbing every- For anyone interested in serious questioning daughter. her for the death of the activist. the 1930s. own rallies. As far-right-wing activities are again coming thing around her, and I found I could easily re- of the role of art in society, The Listener is rich Sarah Leavitt’s As an antidote, Louise re-explores famous and Louise listens as the couple recall joining the Newspapers backed by the Nazis spread their to the fore in Germany, at the outset of the 21st late to her. I could sympathize with the way she with quotations on the subject and Lester uses non-fiction has ap- favorite paintings and sculptures throughout Eu- DNVP (German National People’s Party), hop- propaganda while the DNVP silences its own century, including anti-Semitic activity and vio- runs from her guilt, even as it chases her every many excellent quotes as chapter headings. At peared in No- rope. The politics behind these works of art swim ing for the return of the monarchy in Germany. papers and reporters, shuts down its rallies, and lent confrontations, Louise is inspired to create a step of the way, until she is finally able to absorb first I thought, hey, real people don’t talk like Sarah Leavitt body’s Mother The world slowly begins to allows the Nazis to dominate the campaign with- Vann’s actions and create her that. But people who live deeply in art probably (Heritage 2006) and Beyond Forgetting: change around them, and the out protest. masterpiece. do. Artists aren’t exactly “normal.” So The Lis- Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer’s Dis- Nazi party grows, along with The Orson Welles anecdote, as previously ✍ tener reveals that when you live and breathe art ease (Kent State University Press 2009). attacks on Jewish people. mentioned, now takes on greater significance to THE STEREOTYPICAL ARTIST IS A on a daily basis, it becomes a central part of your Tangles is the first graphic narrative to be a A crisis in the federal gov- the reader. “beautiful soul” putting pas- life even outside its most practical uses. finalist for the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction ernment is approaching as The Nazis won the Lippe election in January sionate feelings to canvas, So The Listener is a good story for people fa- Prize. Tangles was also nominated for the Hindenburg dithers in select- of 1933 with only 39% of the vote. They had print, stone, or song. It’s not miliar with artists and art movements. Lester Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. ing a new chancellor of Ger- increased their vote count by only 4,000 votes often that artists are presented deftly slips these things, their history, their im- 978-1-55111-117-9 many. The top picks are from a preceding federal vote that was held in as mass murderers or power pact, into conversations between his characters, DNVP’s Alfred Lippe only three months earlier, in November. hungry dictators. But one of and ingrains them into their lives. As for Lester’s Dog-eared tale wins big Hugenberg (who owns the After Hitler was subsequently appointed to Hitler’s greatest regrets is that art, it sweeps across the pages, changing as if it is “Some years ago I noticed that there was a paper where Marie and serve as chancellor, other political parties were he was never able to build a alive with his thoughts. lack of quality adventure comics for kids museum to house his personal ✍ Rudolph work) and Adolf Hit- banned. The DNVP was dissolved, opposition aged 7 to 13,” says Glen Lovett, who ler. leaders were found dead, citizens suspected of collection of art. THIS IS FAR FROM A TRADITIONAL COMIC BOOK. has worked for Hanna Barbera and Disney. Along comes the state elec- being Jewish or communist were beaten, and It’s depressing to think that It doubles as an intriguing read for anyone with Now his second graphic novel about a tion in Lippe. Prior to this elec- persecution of the Jews was escalated. That nar- someone who enjoys expres- an abiding interest in the psychology of Hitler Siberian Husky, The Adventures of Jas- tion call in Lippe, the Nazi row victory in Lippe became an annual celebra- sion and creation could so love and the propaganda machine that was the Nazi per: Secrets of the Petroglyph (Lovett Party was losing its appeal. Hit- tion in which Hitler skillfully presented himself destruction. I prefer to write Party. The Listener is not something you can flip Pictures $18.95), has won a Gold Medal at ler’s stubborn desire to hold all as Germany’s hero. Hitler off as nothing more through in an afternoon. I spent hours going ✍ the Independent Publisher Book Awards the power in his hands or none than a delusional, paranoid through the book, taking notes, forming (IPPY) in New York. The IPPYs recognize at all was hurting the party. MARIE AND RUDY EXPRESS THEIR REGRETS FOR NOT psychopath, someone who saw thoughts. independently published books in 69 cat- But Hugenberg chose to strike having done more, and Louise returns home with himself as Germany’s new Much of the dialogue from Hitler (and other egories for North America. 978-0-9783116-2-9 a deal with Hitler, under the their memories and a special gift. Siegfried, the Motherland’s Nazi party leaders) contains direct quotes from guise of national unity, hoping Back home, Louise is even more lost than be- hero come to destroy the his speeches and writings. Lester details what is Jasper for a position of power in a Hit- fore, and slips back into her previous lifestyle, Nibelungs—the Jews. historical fact and what is his own making in the and a ler-led government. returning to the man she had broken up with. But it’s impossible to deny back of the book, which also includes an excel- friend This compromise of prin- After several months, a man named Walter his artistic “flair,” or the way in lent timeline of the rise and fall of the Nazi ciples by Hugenberg has dis- appears. He’s an acquaintance of the Cambodian- which he and his party so party. astrous consequences almost born activist named Vann, who plunged to his skillfully maneuvered a victory. Another nice inclusion is a collection of small immediately. First, Marie and death near the outset of the story. Lester inserts several images biographies of several Nazi or pro-Nazi anima- Typified by this quote: Rudolph’s newspaper is or- This time Louise listens as Walter tells her the and quotations of the tors, film makers, and cartoonists, detailing their “I don’t believe in magic. dered by Hugenberg to cease life story of Vann, a Cambodian doctor who sur- propaganda used by the Na- specific involvement in the Nazi propaganda ma- And when Africans ask me why I don’t, I say that if magic really existed, attacks on the Nazi Party. Hit- vived genocide under the Pol Pot regime. Vann zis. The xenophobia is ram- chine, and their lives after the fall of the Third we wouldn’t have allowed the abduction 9781894037488 of 100 million people, of whom perhaps ler’s party is in deep financial lost his parents and was never able to overcome pant. The vitriol is truly Reich. 40 million reached the Americas and his survivor’s guilt. Because the Pol Pot regime 60 million died on the way. If magic really worked, the slaves would Louise (left and above), an An awkward Adolf Hitler A longer version of Kristin Bomba’s review have turned into birds and particularily targeted artists for execution, Vann flown back home.” artist listening for answers. took a great interest in art, wondering what made prepares for a speech. appeared in ComicAttack.net

20 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SUMMER • 2011 21 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SUMMER • 2011 22 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 reviews KIDLIT

Kim La Fave Fishing with Gubby and Gary Kent GUBBY SNAGS THREE NOMINATIONS

Fishing with Gubby by Kim La Fave & to children up to 12 years. Il- Choice Award at the BC Gary Kent (Harbour Publishing $19.95) SMOKE lustrator Kim La Fave and Book Prizes. he Canadian Library As- Gary Kent, both from Gary Kent was a commer- Tsociation has shortlisted Roberts Creek, have also cial fisherman and salmon ALARMS Harbour Publishing’s Fishing had Fishing with Gubby nomi- troller for nine years, prior to with Gubby for the Amelia nated for the Joe Shuster becoming a furniture maker. Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming by Andrew Weaver (Orca, $9.95) Frances Howard-Gibbon Il- Comic Book Creator Awards Kim La Fave has previously

F YOU SPENT A GOOD PART OF LAST WINTER SCRAPING FROST OFF lustrator’s Award, which is in the Comics for Kids sec- won the Howard-Gibbon your car’s windshield and bundling up in mittens, toques awarded each year to the tion. As well, Fishing with Award for Amos’s Sweater, and woolen scarves you might be inclined, for a few frigid minutes anyway, to give some credence to the notion that illustrator of a noteworthy Gubby was shortlisted for written by Janet Lunn.

global warming is a hoax. Canadian book that appeals the Bill Duthie Booksellers' 9781553655725 IBut not so. Andrew Weaver states emphatically in Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming that increased greenhouse gases are responsible for making 2010 the hottest year in the past 130 years. DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE INVISIBLE DOG Scientists know this “as surely as medical professionals under-

stand that smoking causes cancer. We stop No Pets Allowed by Irene Watts & Kathryn The only glitch is that Fred’s prevent further vandalism, Mat- smoking if we want to lower our risk of devel- E. Shoemaker (Tradewind $8.95) an invisible dog. That small de- thew ends up with not one, but oping lung cancer. We must stop emitting tail doesn’t stop Matthew and two dogs—Lucky and Fred. greenhouse gases to the atmosphere if we HEN MATTHEW MOVES TO Fred from putting the run on a Berlin-born Irene Watts, want to stop global warming.” the city he has to leave brick-wielding, window-smash- who’s made her home in B.C. Generation Us, a selection of the Rapid his dog Lucky behind. ing car thief. And for the past twenty years, arrived Reads series featuring truncated versions of W He and his mom now live in a when the apart- in Great Britain as a child via Louise popular fiction and timely nonfiction titles, Vancouver apartment, an apart- ment’s residents Kindertransport, the rescue DONNELLY offers a condensed overview of the detailed ment with a lot of rules, sternly sign a petition movement that from 1938 to the and science-backed argument for action now, enforced by Mr. Leo, the build- demanding a start of World War II moved not later, as presented in Weaver’s Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a ing manager. guard dog to 10,000 children (none of them Warming World (Viking Canada). In Irene Watts’ No Pets Allowed, accompanied by parents) out of Weaver begins by defining the difference between climate and with illustrations by Kathryn E. Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland weather. Climate guides us in choosing May for a family reunion. Shoemaker, Fred, who’s “a mil- and Czechoslovakia. It should be pleasant then, just the right temperature for an out- lion times better than a fish,” has In 2001, Watts was honored door celebration. But what if there’s a sudden snow flurry on that a very nice leash, pulls the cov- with a Playwrights’ Union of late spring day, an event not unheard of in Canada? That’s weather. ers off the bed and, when Mr. Canada lifetime membership for Or, as Weaver puts it: “Climate is what you expect; weather is Leo’s not around, wrestles with her outstanding contribution to what you get.” Walking readers through an explanation of the Matthew on the front lawn. Canadian drama and theatre. scientific method and defining the various stages of how knowl- 978-1-896580-9-44 edge is acquired, he moves on to outline the coming fallout from rising sea levels, changing precipitation patterns and struggling ecosystems. Weaver acknowledges “projected climate change for the next twenty to thirty years is very similar whether we continue with grow- ing emissions or we start to stabilize and slowly reduce emissions.” How then can we be motivated to take action in our busy daily lives when the benefits from these actions won’t be apparent in our lifetime? “Do we have any responsibility for the well-being of future generations?” Weaver asks. It’s a question only society, not science, can address. If the answer is yes, Generation Us offers possibilities for per- sonal and political change. The solutions are not simple or easy, nor are they without economic and ethical implications. Recycling, buying organic, switching from incandescent to fluorescent light bulbs are mere “baby steps.” A fundamental shift is required. There must be a re-examination of how our choices today will affect the lives of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Only then can we evolve from the “Me Generation” to the “Us Generation.” Andrew Weaver is professor and research chair in climate modeling and analysis at the University of Victoria, a lead author in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and 2007 co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008 he was appointed to the Order of British Columbia. 978-1-55469-804

Louise Donnelly contributes her column on a regular basis from Vernon. Fred, the invisible dog. Illustration by Kathryn E. Shoemaker

23 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2011 new from ANVIL PRESS

Exit by Nelly Arcan Afflictions & Departures trans. by David Hamilton by Madeline Sonik Exit is the final novel First-person essays that from Quebec literary probe the turbulent and sensation Nelly Arcan. changing nature of the It is a hymn to life. world from the late ’50s to the mid-70s. “A work of originality The First Book pushed to the limit.” “Her memory is dustless, Competition was held to – Le Devoir capacious, uncanny. ... The celebrate the 10th clarity of her vision makes the “Her writing will grab you anniversary of the prose gleam and transforms and pull you into a Writer’s Studio at Simon ISBN: 978-1-897535-66-0 • $20 ISBN: 978-1-897535-67-7 • $20 autobiography into art.” fabulous world.” 192 pps. • Novel • June 184 pps. • Essays/Memoir • May – Lorna Crozier Fraser University, – Le Journal de Québec Harbour Centre. The competition identified Hard Hed The Song Collides three fine new writers by Charles Tidler by Calvin Wharton whose books were pub- lished this spring. Hard Hed is a contem- A highly personal and porary retelling of the internal metaphysical The winners are: Johnny Appleseed investigation into the The House with the Broken story, an unabashedly state of the natural world. Two, amemoirbyMyrl original work of fiction Coulter of Edmonton; “Wharton’s mastery of his art that roams in and out never fails to bring his words Nondescript Rambunctious, of time and place and to resonant life in the ear and a novel by Jackie Bateman point of view. mind.” – Tom Wayman of Vancouver; and Galaxy, poetrybyRachel “Here is a poetry of gentle ISBN: 978-1-897535-69-1 • $20 ISBN: 978-1-897535-68-4 • $16 Thompson, also from 184 pps. • Novel • May 80 pps. • Poetry • Available surprises.” – David Zieroth Vancouver. All three are now available. www.anvilpress.com • [email protected] available to the trade from utp | repped by the lpg

24 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 reviews FICTION

A woman’s love affair with Cuba and its people passionately deepens in Amanda Hale’s FIDELITYFIDELITY In the Embrace of the Alligator INFIDELITYINFIDELITY && FIDELFIDEL In the Embrace of the Alligator by Amanda Hale (Thistledown $18.95)

BY ERINNA GILKISON tion,” Onaldo concocts a tale to tell Karina about the money she MANDA HALE’S IN THE EM- has given to him for travel, and brace of the Alligator prima- how it was ostensibly stolen. He A rily describes the love knows that she will take pity on affair between a Canadian him and give him more. woman and a Cuban man, re- Meanwhile, Onaldo’s ex-wife vealing the complications of a dismisses Onaldo’s relationship romance between people of dif- with Karina as “yet another af- ferent backgrounds. fair.” Onaldo continues to use The title is derived from the Karina’s money to improve the fact that Cuba is often perceived home of his ex-wife, with whom geographically, on a map, as re- he is also living. To a point, sembling the shape of an alliga- Karina understands that she is tor. being taken advantage of, but Embrace also outlines the feels guilty after she confronts shape of a love affair between a Onaldo. She cannot resist him foreigner and Cuba itself. even after she learns how he’s Whether readers have been to spending her money. Cuba or not, they will be fasci- Rosamund, a German visitor, nated to discover the personali- faces a similar situation. That’s ties, beliefs, customs and not to say that everyone takes everyday struggles of life in Cuba advantage of their foreign through this collection of short friends and their wealth, but fiction. ✫ sexual exploitation is a lurking threat in many such relation- RECOVERING FROM THE DEATH OF HER ships portrayed in this collection. brother, Karina, an artist from The advantage-taking can go Toronto, initially goes to Cuba either way. In one memorable to create and display art in Ha- story, “Her New Red Dress,” vana. In the first story, “First Linancia, a Cuban woman, gets Steps, Last Steps,” Hale de- involved with an Italian man who scribes music, sickness, tourism, has a wife and children at home. slavery, broken bodies, dance, Luigi treats Linancia terribly, but filth, warmth, politics, romance in the end she is forced to come and hunger. back to him. We later learn she After her exhibition open- has given up her job in order to ing, on a side trip to Baracoa— be available to him whenever the second oldest European he’s in Cuba. Having gained the settlement in the Americas, lo- freedom to quit a job she hated, cated on the eastern end of she entered into a new kind of Cuba—Karina meets Onaldo. servitude. They dance, drink, eat, and rap- Karina learns that many things idly fall in love. that are simple to do in Canada— Karina soon discovers that such as booking a hotel room, differences in laws, cultures and buying lettuce, or leaving the finances can make relationships country—are governed by strict a challenge. Cuba’s economy rules and double standards in depends on tourists, and there Cuba. A Cuban who has pur- are laws that prohibit local peo- chased an airline ticket can be ple from becoming romantically bumped off the flight in favour involved with foreigners—to pro- of a foreigner right up until the tect the tourists. moment the flight takes off. Cubans are granted fewer In “El Caballo de Rosa- freedoms than visitors, and they mund,” Rosamund loves the face restrictions on travel and Revolution and everything else staying in tourist accommoda- about Cuba until she learns that tions. Relationships happen any- she is not allowed to buy the way, often to the detriment of horse of her dreams. one party or the other; but Fear is a rampant force for equally often mutually advanta- both subservience and subter- geous. Many blind eyes are fuge in Cuba. In one story, an turned in this country, readers arrest sends the rest of the town are told. of Baracoa into hiding. “Baracoa When it comes to romance became a warren of creatures in Cuba, the lines between running scared, disappearing genuine feelings and adven- into their burrows…” tures for personal gain can be Disconnections between for- blurred. Cubans know what a eigners and Cubans abound, in romance with a foreigner can language, politics, and attitudes. mean for both themselves and Part of it is simply the difference their extended family. This col- between a person on vacation lection consequently features and a person living their regu- many uncomfortable conversa- lar life. Much of it runs deeper. Cover image from tions about money. Such talk in- In “Senora Amable Ponce,” a In the Embrace of evitably arises in the face of story named for the hostess of a the Alligator financial disparity. place Karina and Onaldo stay Needs and desires can turn during a romantic rendezvous, to greed in cross-cultural rela- Karina feels in the air “a kind of tionships. In “Creative Non-Fic- continued on page 27

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26 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 reviews FICTION

morals is rapid, he doesn’t wholly give them up without thought, and we see enough vestiges of humanity in his char- PITCH NOIR acter to keep us engaged in his struggles. After the first time he Novice novelist Fraser Nixon approached seriously injures a man, Mick at first declares that he “didn’t publisher Scott McIntyre in a restaurant, care.” However, later when the hoping to interest him in a story about a opportunity presents itself he makes a point of asking after the petty criminal in “toxic and addictive” man’s condition, concerned Montreal, circa 1926. It worked. that the wound could have been lethal. The reader is left guess- ‘The Man Who Killed’ has been set free. ing about just how far Mick will be willing to go. Though Mick plays the cen- BY NOAH MOSCOVITCH all to hell and Mick is caught up tral role in the text, in many in more and more violence, as The Man Who Killed by Fraser Nixon ways it is the city that is the most (Douglas & McIntyre $22.95) Jack struggles desperately to interesting character. Through keep ahead of his debtors and language and various refer- RASER NIXON’S VERSION OF figure out who sold them out. ences, Nixon goes out of his way 1926 Montreal is not a Covering only just over two to offer as much immersion into pretty place. Bootleggers, weeks, The Man Who Killed F Montreal of the 1920s as he can. politicians, prostitutes, toughs, chronicles Mick’s descent into Occasionally this can make for a grave robbers and addicts of all crime, and the rapid decay of difficult read, and between the kinds crowd the pages of The his conscience. On the whole, old-fashioned slang and the Man Who Killed. And the city is a Mick finds the process surpris- medical terms I found myself perfect match for its denizens— ingly easy. Partly this is due to cracking open a dictionary more filthy and corrupt. his destitute circumstances and frequently than I expected. But We first meet our protago- lack of alternatives. He briefly more often than not, it allows nist, Mick, at the docks, staring considers leaving Montreal to the city to come to life, in all its out across the garbage, fumes return to his father, a minister gruesome glory. and vermin. “No clean thing working in the backwoods of Montreal, as portrayed in the around the harbour,” he thinks, British Columbia, but decides text, is toxic and addictive, and including himself. Tossed out of he is too far gone. “You’re noth- seems to leak into everything and med school, recovering from ing,” he tells himself at one everyone. Mick and Jack are end- morphine addiction, torn up point, “not a mechanic of the lessly drinking and sniffing co- over a failed romance, and es- human machine, not a son or caine in various taverns and sentially penniless, Mick has lover but a criminal, a short-term hotels, or even just breathing the seen better days. He waits, smok- ex-soldier unbloodied in war, an smog-filled air. The customs offi- ing his second-to-last cigarette, Irish Protestant, worst of both cial from Mick’s very first job is for Jack. worlds.” And really it is this, his later described as a degenerate An ex-Pinkerton agent, Jack self-hatred and desire for de- gambler—the reason he is under is his adopted brother, and has struction that makes it so easy to Jack’s thumb in the first place. turned up in Montreal recently, slide deeper into Jack’s world. Within this city, Mick’s down- working as a bootlegger and Much of Mick’s despair, and The Man Who Killed by Fraser Nixon ward spiral seems natural and small-time criminal. And Mick is his unpleasant situation, stems (above) chronicles one man’s descent into expected. When he discovers just desperate enough to take from his rejection by Laura, sup- crime and the decay of his conscience. that actress and fellow morphine his offer of “some dirty work, posedly the love of his life. addict Lilyan Tashman puts with a chance of trouble,” in re- Though whether he was really drops of Belladonna in her eyes turn for a square meal. This first in love with her, or only what abruptly broke things off with Mick tells the story, the crude before performances to make time Mick doesn’t have to do she represented—status—is him, he began using morphine slang of the times is often over- them “look bigger and much, just cut off an escape never fully clear. Laura is higher to numb the pain, thus begin- laid with medical terminology brighter,” Mick’s medical train- route and watch while Jack class, cold and aloof, and looked ning his downward spiral. He and references, creating a ing temporarily resurfaces: threatens and beats a bought-off at Mick with the same degree was eventually caught thieving, strange contrast with the brutal “You’ll go blind. It’s poison.” But customs agent who is trying to of contempt that he has for him- and forced to withdraw from events of the text. We thus have Lilyan only laughs, “So’s every- “spit out his hook.” Easy enough, self. He began stealing and sell- McGill’s medical school. a constant reminder that Mick thing.” 978-1-55365-569-5 and Mick remains unfazed: “Life ing morphine from the Royal Mick’s educated back- was not always a criminal, and had shown me much worse.” Victoria hospital in order to treat ground, both as a minister’s son that his life once looked very dif- However, the next job, a her in the style to which she was and university student, is never ferent from what we see of it. Noah Moscovitch is leaving smuggling run to the States, goes accustomed. Then, after she far from the reader’s mind. As Though the shift in Mick’s Vancouver for Ottawa. FIDELITY, INFIDELITY & FIDEL

continued from page 25 the funeral parlour is not disguised, and death is energetic laziness soaked in eroticism.” not hidden and sterile as in our society, are all These feelings are in sharp contrast to their factors in making this story memorable. hosts’ urgencies, and their tiredness. Their host- Amanda Hale has clearly spent a lot of time in ess Senora Amable is “a wounded woman strug- Cuba. One assumes or feels that she has experi- gling to maintain her dignity.” Several times in this enced versions of many of these stories first-hand. story staff try to urgently communicate something, She has come to know and understand aspects of but Karina never figures out what it is. Karina strug- Cuban society that tourists in resorts don’t always gles to understand the senora’s Spanish; and the see, and has used her experiences to create a re- senora does not try to help her understand. A fel- warding collection. Her writing is strong and sen- low guest who does not speak Spanish is described suous. We are given some intimacy with the heart as being on his own island. The story ends with a of complex Cuban life. 978-1-897235-87-4 literal disconnect: the senora’s phone line goes dead. Erinna Gilkison is a Vancouver editor. In a haunting, lovely story, Mirian Zelda lives next door to the funeral parlour in Baracoa, very Other notable books about Cuba by B.C. authors include much in tune with the comings and goings. At Maurice Halperin’s Return to Havana (Vanderbilt University Press, 1994), Adolf Hungry Wolf’s Trains night, when she sleeps, she is visited by the recently of Cuba (Good Medicine, 1997), Rosa Jordan’s Cy- deceased, and her role is to guide them home to cling Cuba (Lonely Planet, 2002), Cornelia their final resting place. Hoogland’s Cuba Journal (Black Moss 2003), Linda The gentle character of Mirian, the prevalence Rogers’ Friday Water (Cormorant, 2003) and of spirituality and religion, the mystery of a van- Rosamund Norbury’s Notes at the End: Cuba on ished Czech visitor, and the fact that the gore of Amanda Hale in La Cuchilla, Cuba the Verge (Arsenal Pulp, 2005).

27 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 The Politics of Blindness On Potato Mountain From Charity to Parity A Chilcotin Mystery Graeme McCreath Bruce Fraser 79% of blind Canadians An award winning novel have never had a job. Blind that is not only a tale of physiotherapist gives pro- love and mystery, but also active solutions involving a story of a remarkable charities and government. land and its people. 978-1-894694-81-0 $22.95 978-1-894694-82-7 $19.95 In Praise of Strong Women A Psychiatrist’s Memoir David Kirkpatrick This loving memoir honors the women who make our world a better place. Winner www.granvilleislandpublishing.com of a silver medal for non-fic- Tel: 604 688 0320 Toll Free: 1 877 688 0320 tion in Western Canada from the Independent Publishers New Authors Welcome Book Awards. 978-1-894694-70-4 $24.95

The Vikings Return Icelandic Immigration to Canada, 1870-1920 Marian McKenna This volume takes a new look from a Canadian perspective at the so-called “Great Emigration”. The chapters narrate their dramatic story, tracing the roots of discontent in the homeland, the origins of the first tentative immigrating groups, and the beginnings of a mass emigration. This modern saga deserves a re-telling for not only those of Icelandic descent, but for all those interested in the human condition and in these pioneering immigrants whose labors have helped to build the Canada we know today.

28 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2011 reviews NON-FICTION

BY NATALIE APPLETON siege as well as describe why hus- The Empress and Mrs. Conger: The bands were suspicious of Cixi, Uncommon Friendship of Two Women who gives her second audience and Two Worlds by Grant Hayter-Menzies UNDERSTANDING SARAH to Sarah and the other diplo- (UBC Press/Hong Kong U. Press $35) The true story of the intimate relationship between matic ladies in February 1902, tudying the gift of a tiny four years after the first meet- tree decorated with Chi- Sarah Conger and Empress Dowager Cixi, a concubine ing and more than a year after nese symbols, Sarah Con- the uprising ended. S who ruled China at the turn of the 20th century. Here Cixi takes Sarah’s fin- ger sits in her Beijing Christmas room and writes to her sister: gers, gives her gifts and says they “Do you think it strange that I time” and, during a dust storm ment against foreign- Certainly it explains are all one family. During one am becoming interested in on a trip to the Great Wall, the ers and their God,” Cixi’s role in the rebel- of the handful of times they see these people?” Congers closed their eyes and thousands of Boxers lion. The empress dowa- each other, a picture is taken of Sarah, who arrived in the clung to their ponies, who “were torch mission hospi- ger, we learn, “hated” the two holding hands. Chinese capital only six months to serve another important pur- tals and churches. foreigners, the chunks Is this friendship? For the earlier—in July 1898, with her pose in two months’ time, which The diplomats, they were taking out of time and between women in husband Edward, the newly none of their riders could have meanwhile, watch China’s coastline and these two stations, probably. Is it named United States Minister to imagined.” bullets strike a baby’s their Christian religion, the heart and meat of The Em- China—is already reflecting Both the fabric and the ani- headboard, wrap luring away so many of press and Mrs. Conger? No. more on this culture than many mals are used to keep the Con- bodies in flags be- Grant Hayter-Menzies her people. Some de- Hayter-Menzies might have of the other diplomats’ wives gers and the other diplomats cause there is no bate whether Cixi sup- succeeded in capturing an un- ever did. alive during the uprising, a siege wood for coffins and eat pets. ported the Boxers entirely or likely friendship between two Her interest in Chinese peo- which spans 55 days in the sum- Indeed, Hayter-Menzies sup- only in part in the beginning. people in different worlds had ple is unusual and unwavering, mer of 1900 and many more plies some absorbing accounts of Hayter-Menzies, however, he focused on Sarah and her her letters about her Beijing pages in The Empress and Mrs. the uprising, and it’s clearly a doesn’t take a stand: “Both houseboy. Wang gently and inti- encounters are lively and telling. Conger. traumatic time for both Conger theories have truth in them, de- mately offers wardrobe advice, Both fuel Vancouver Island bi- In this section, Hayter- and Cixi, experiencing it sepa- pending on where weight is hides pet ponies from hungry ographer/historian Grant Menzies drops the reader right rately and differently, but does placed in the body of evidence.” eyes, plants flowers where the Hayter-Menzies’ The Empress and into the line of fire. With only his in-depth exploration of the The chapters about the up- family’s Pekingese dog is buried Mrs. Conger: The Uncommon the fuel of incense sticks, their event furnish our understand- rising also offer insight into how and makes an altar of the Con- Friendship of Two Women and Two shouts and “centuries of resent- ing of their friendship? foreigners like Sarah survive the gers’ daughter, away in America Worlds. at Christmas. Through Wang’s This is a book about the inti- sweet, simple actions and Sarah’s mate relationship between interpretation of them in her Sarah and Empress Dowager writing, we truly learn what it is Cixi, a concubine who came to to be Chinese, and what it is to rule China. Or is it? be Sarah. It’s clear from the start that Once more, Sarah’s letters Hayter-Menzies has done a me- give this book its pulse. Hayter- ticulous amount of research, Menzies supplements her words which he uses first to explore with the accounts of others, such Sarah’s life, from growing up in as Polly Condit Smith who, dur- the American Midwest to be- ing the uprising, sees people coming a politician’s wife, be- “half-starved, covered with soot fore abruptly delving into and ashes from the fires, women American trade, Chinese rela- carrying on their breasts horri- tions and Cixi’s past. bly sick and diseased babies, and The Empress and Mrs. Conger in one case a woman who held a begins like a textbook, devoid of dead baby.” emotion or narrative and filled This is the narrative, the hu- instead with dates and summa- man portrait of life amidst ries. Beijing’s unrest, the reader Sarah’s letters, which give craves. the story life, are therefore all Unfortunately, we read the more welcome in later chap- more dates than description, ters. though there are some illustri- After Sarah and the other ous details in The Empress and diplomats’ wives meet Cixi for Mrs. Conger, such as pigs wearing the first time in December 1898, leather “socks” to protect their Sarah writes, “Only to think! feet from stones, Sarah never China, after centuries and cen- mastering the chopstick, shops turies of locked doors, has now offering to brush dust off book set them ajar!” Sarah’s frank spines and Legation Street be- excitement, indicated often by coming known as “Cut Up For- exclamation marks, says it all: the eigners Crowing” Street. meeting was special, and the These fascinating facts, how- start of something more. ever, are often offset by weak And yet almost 150 pages pass comparisons: relationships as before we find Sarah and Cixi simmering pots and choppy seas; in the same room again. The Cixi “unable to jump down from reader wonders when this the tiger she had heedlessly cho- friendship will emerge, and if it sen to ride;” and Wang, so busy really is the focus of The Empress he was “carrying out enough and Mrs. Conger. other daily jobs to make a Hayter-Menzies, the author Figaro’s head spin.” of biographies about stage and Wang, Cixi, the other for- screen stars Charlotte Green- eigners and even Sarah almost wood and Billie Burke, as well disappear from the last chapter, as one about Manchu-American which drags as Hayter-Menzies personality Princess Der Ling, summarizes Sarah’s suspected expertly explains how foreign- looting and her estate sales in ers and their religion collide America before her death. with Chinese unrest to create a In life, one of Sarah’s goals deadly rebellion, the Boxer was to understand China and its Uprising. people, and she succeeds. In The His ability to build suspense Empress and Mrs. Conger, Hayter- and foreshadow the revolt is also Menzies succeeds at under- noteworthy. The bolts of silk standing Sarah. 9789888083008 given to Conger by Cixi would “be put to a rougher use than Empress Dowager Cixi and Sarah Conger Natalie Appleton is a freelance intended in a little over a year’s reviewer in Vernon.

29 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2011 reviews FICTION

made from a customized coat- hanger—at the dinner table, his LOST BOOMERS Dad wraps it around the kid’s neck. That scene leads to an Drinking and sinking, Dennis E. Bolen’s epiphany. “As Dad was wrapping that wire around my neck, he was generation has left the Age of Aquarius a jealous man. For years, we’d for the Age of Estrangement been competing for Mom’s atten- tion.” The boy runs away into the woods and, although his status as BY JEREMY TWIGG over academic institutions or rise outcast is temporary, his psyche to the top of the corporate is forever shaped by the wiener- Anticipated Results by Dennis E. Bolen (Arsenal Pulp Press $18.95) world. They’re smart, but not stick incident. Adding insult to successful. They haven’t made injury, the boy is prejudged by a he unnamed narrator in it to the upper class, so they try cottage owner who catches him Dennis E. Bolen’s short to console themselves with the stealing peanut butter and jam Tstory collection Antici- aforementioned parties and sandwiches. “The injustice of it pated Results is the Everyman of their impressive command of became the start of my darkness, the lost Baby Boomer genera- the English language. the portal to a black will inside tion. He has a decent job and The narrator’s description of my soul.” Despite the narrator works hard at maintaining a re- military generals in charge of being declared emotionally lationship with his daughter, the Vietnam War is a case in scarred, Bolen’s Everyman whom we don’t meet until half- point: “They create this awful Boomer consistently comes

way through the book, and he Moloch—literally a young-man- PHOTO across as well-intentioned, as gets on well with women. eating machine—that became Dennis Bolen someone who cares about others. His culinary abilities and vo- such an uber-monster, such a TWIGG We get to know Bolen’s nar- cabulary (“perspicacious”) are mental-physical-emotional-social bio for Anticipated Results, his sev- ditch. “A shiver seized him from rator in bits and pieces, culmi- above-average. But he’s unsatis- object of utter hatred and po- enth work of fiction since 1992. anus to scalp and nearly black- nating in a degree of intimacy fied. His friends come across as larization, that it caused a politi- Perhaps Bolen is tired of the as- ened his vision.” You can’t mess that is simultaneously disturbing deadbeats, many of them strug- cal schism in the collective world sociation. Regardless, his writing with a sentence like that. and welcome. But it’s ultimately gling with addiction. He looks consciousness such that our hair has a toughness that comes Coming near the end of the Paul, the most hopeless drunk, for meaning in ill-fated dinner and our music and our attitudes across as having been gleaned collection, there’s a 1950s-era who bookends the collection. parties with guests that are un- became picayune concerns in from first-hand experience. story about the narrator’s child- Paul symbolizes lost the mem- der-appreciative, emotionally the overall miasma.” The opening story, entitled hood in a small Vancouver Is- bers of the Boomer generation: unavailable or just plain rude. Clearly, someone is trying too “Paul’s Car,” is a good example. land town. He’s burdened with Left for dead in a ditch, aban- Boomers are typically hard to impress the guests. One of the book’s secondary a boozing father who can’t hold doned, hanging sideways in a thought of as being an entitled I’ve always found Bolen’s past characters, Paul, has suffered a down a steady job and a mother sunken car. 978-1-155152-400-9 generation, but the people we as a parole officer interesting— car accident (he’s a cab driver) who becomes collateral damage. meet in Bolen’s stories are the something that set him apart that leaves him unable to move When the nine-year-old narra- A graduate of UBC in creative ones that fell through the from other authors. This detail inside his vehicle, which is slowly tor proudly displays his new writing, Jeremy Twigg works in cracks, the ones that didn’t take is missing from the publisher’s sinking into a chilly Richmond wiener stick—a device he’s public relations in Vancouver.

30 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 WHO’SWHO BRITISH COLUMBIA

of B.C. publishers. The first to be re-re- leased is Daphne Marlatt and is for Alrawi is for Bates Carole Itter’s Opening Doors (Har- bour $24.95). All titles should be avail- KARIM ALRAWI OF VANCOUVER WAS IN PRINTMAKER PAT MARTIN BATES OF able by September. 978-1-55017-521-9 Tahrir Square in January to support the Victoria recalls her upbringing in [The other non-fiction titles are: Who Killed Janet pro-democracy uprising in his native Moncton, New Brunswick, during and Smith by Ed Starkins; Along the No. 20 Line by Egypt. In a room overlooking the square after World War II, with paintings and Rolf Knight; A Hard Man to Beat by Howard White. in Cairo, with two million pro-democ- photographs in It is I, Patricia: An Art- Fiction titles are: Crossings by Betty Lambert; Class Warfare by D.M. Fraser; A Credit to Your Race by racy demonstrators below, Alrawi had a ist’s Childhood (Hedgerow Press Truman Green; The Inverted Pyramid by Bertrand bird’s-eye-view as government thugs $29.95), with writing assistance W. Sinclair. Poetry titles are: Day and Night by threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at from Hedgerow publisher Joan Dorothy Livesay, Anhaga by Jon Furberg.] protestors who sheltered behind barri- Coldwell. 978-0-9736882-9-0 cades of iron sheeting. Protestors erected a tent city within is for Dowling Tahrir Square until the dictator Hosni Kristeva Dowling horsing around Mubarak finally resigned. During the AFTER DOING A MASTER’S DEGREE IN three weeks, protestors maintained a car- inspired by Corlett’s two children, E is social anthropology in New Zealand, nival-like atmosphere to maintain mo- for Environment aims to shape family dis- Vancouver-born Kristeva Dowling rale. Teams of young people cleaned the cussions on what it means to be environ- bought land in the Bella Coola Valley in square daily. As protestors were killed, mentally friendly. 978-1-4391-9455-3 posters were made of the martyrs and 1993. Her humorous memoir Chicken hung from buildings and lampposts. Poop for the Soul: In Search of Food Alrawi was in Cairo putting the fin- Sovereignty (Harbour $24.95) de- Brad Cran: scribes her not always successful, back- ishing touches on his new children’s standing is for Friedland book, The Mouse Who Saved Egypt up for free to-the-land efforts to attain 100% food speech and self-sufficiency in 2008 by learning a (Tradewind $16.95), illustrated by Bee NEW WORLD PRESS IN BEIJING, CHINA, WILL vintage titles wide variety of skills—such as growing Willey. It’s a teaching tale of kindness, translate and publish Robert N. wheat, canning, tracking wild game, and showing how even a small creature can Friedland’s collection of short stories making maple syrup. 978-1-894759-60-1 be heroic as a mouse saves ancient Egypt Faded Love (Libros Libertad $22.95). in an unexpected way. Friedland practices human rights and Born and raised in Alexandria, Alrawi is for Cran administrative law in Richmond. There lived in England where he was writer- is for Environment are Chinese connections in many of his AS THE POET LAUREATE FOR VANCOUVER in-residence at the Royal Court Theatre , stories. 9781926763002 and the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Brad Cran distinguished himself by KIRKUS REVIEWS PRAISES E IS FOR ENVIRON- He has written more than 30 profession- having the guts to criticize the Olympic ment (Simon & Schuster $21.99), by ally produced plays. arts bureaucrats who had the gall to re- Vancouver animator Ian James is for Graydon Alrawi currently supervises interna- quire B.C. artists to contractually agree Corlett, by saying “the message that tional aid and development programs in not to badmouth anything to do with children can model for adults is BORN IN 1958, SHARI GRAYDON Africa, the Middle East and the Games. Now he has spearheaded a clear and the approach is fresh.” moved to Ottawa from B.C. in Central Asia. 978-1-896580-79-1 successful publishing pro- An interactive parenting book gram for reviving 2002. She has frequently re- ten out-of-print turned to B.C. to promote her ‘classic’ titles work that includes a non-fiction from a variety book, In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You (Annick Press, Ian J. Corlett continued on next page

Karim Alrawi above Tahrir Square, Egypt EGYPT IN TURMOIL

31 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 WHO’SWHOBRITISHCOLUMBIA

Jen Sookfong Lee

continued from page 31 2004). For her collection of stories from remarkable women who revel in the joys is for Jen of ageing, I Feel Great About My Hands (D&M $22.95), Shari Graydon THE BETTER MOTHER (KNOPF $29.95) BY invited women from across Canada— Jen Sookfong Lee is about an odd all over age 50— to friendship between Miss Val, a longtime provide an alterna- burlesque dancer, and Danny Lim, a tive perspective to Vancouver wedding photographer in the notion that age- the early 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was ing is a downhill spreading rapidly. slide. Graydon’s an- The pair met in 1958 when eight- thology of stories, year-old Danny Lim was sent to buy ciga- Shari Graydon essays and poems rettes for his father, but lost the money. embrace the changes, discoveries and Frantic, he rushed through Chinatown wisdom that come with age. and saw Miss Val behind a nightclub. B.C. contributors include Graydon, The burlesque dancer gave him a pack Frances Bula, Lyn Cockburn, Bonnie of cigarettes and her silk belt. Sherr Klein, Ann Cowan, Liz Whynot, Before Miss Val became the Siamese Harriett Lemer and Lillian Kitten in showbiz, she grew up in an old Zimmerman. 978-1-55365-768-6 house on the Fraser River. 978-0-307-39950-2

is for Hudson is for Kurtenbach

WITH OVER 30 YEARS EXPERIENCE AS AN RAISED IN A LARGE FARM FAMILY IN amateur botanist, Phillipa Hudson Saskatchewan, Connie Kurten- first identified the most popular coastal bach has gathered her recollections of flowers for A Field Guide to Coastal rural life in the 1940s for short stories Flowers of the Pacific Northwest (supply- that comprise In My Mother’s Garden ing English and Latin names) and has (Windshift Press $16.95), a work of now completed a adult fiction told through the eyes of an follow-up volume, innocent but adventurous young girl. A Field Guide to 978-0-9811376-9-8 Alpine Flowers of the Pacific North- west (Harbour is for Lyon $7.95). Phillipa Hudson 978-1-55017-540-0 IT’S HARD TO KEEP UP WITH ANNABEL Lyon, winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for her novel, The Golden Mean. It was also shortlisted for is for Italians the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Gover- nor General’s Literary Award, the Ethel THEY FIRST ARRIVED VIA SAN FRANCISCO IN Wilson Fiction Prize and the Common- the early 1860s. They gave us Calona wealth Prize. Translated into six languages, Wines (Capozzi), Vancouver Whitecaps The Golden Mean (Random House 2009) (Lenarduzzi) and fancy restaurants imagines the friendship between Aris- (Menghi). They are the Italians. And totle and Alexander the Great, their collective story in British Colum- as narrated by Aristotle. Lyon’s latest work bia has been told by Lynne Bowen is for young people. Encore Edie (Pen- in Whoever Gives Us Bread (D&M guin $14), was released in February to $32.95), including the plight of 53 Ital- rave reviews. And, yes, Hello! Canada ians who were shipped off to a magazine has made her one of their Kananaskis internment camp for fear Women of the Year. Lyon will serve as one that they would form a fifth column in of the three judges for the Ontario support of fascist dictator Benito swankfest known as the Scotiabank Giller Mussolini. 978-1-55365-607-4 Prize for fiction. 978-0-143177418

32 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 The World's Most Lovable and Mischievous Sparky Bear Cub debted adult friend to artists, cold documentarian of a haunted sanitarium, and an engaged contemporary ticking BY WENDY SHYMANSKI off beauties.” Her poems are intended to evoke the “thread of spirit that links This heartwarming novel about a first-year cub is based upon factual all our lost bits.” 978-0-88784-272-6 information and stories recorded by the author over a ten-year period of studying and photographing the Khutzeymateen Valley grizzly bears in northern British Columbia. Sparky: The World's Most Lovable and is for Pojar Mischievous Bear Cub is a beautiful tale of the mystical Khutzeymateen Valley and the grizzly bears, who, if they could speak, might have told the story themselves. ROSAMUND POJAR OF SMITHERS FIRST FOR AGES 7-12, AND UP. self-published Trees and Shrubs in Win- ter: A Guide to the Identification of Trees MORSE CODE: Garry Thomas Morse and Shrubs in Northwestern British Co- recently launched Discovery Passages lumbia (Smithers: Cassiope Press, 2003). at the ANZA Club in Vancouver along Plants featured are found throughout with new books by Proma Tagore and Cecily Nicholson. B.C. and the Rockies, with a focus on those north of Williams Lake. This work has been revised and republished as Trees and Shrubs in Winter: An Iden- is for Morse tification Guide for Northern British Columbia (Creekstone $20), illustrated “I hope to draw by Evi Coulson. 978-0-9783195-3-3 GARRY THOMAS MORSE’S DISCOVERY attention to the importance Passages (Talonbooks $16.95) has been of the preservation described as the first collection of po- of the fragile grizzly etry about the Kwakwaka’wakw is for Queer species,and our planet.” (Kwakiutl) First Nations. Morse’s book —Wendy Shymanski retraces Captain Vancouver’s original AFTER WRITING A WISH-LIST OF THEIR sailing route along the B.C. coast. The To order a signed copy, email: favourite queer authors, Ivan E. poems contain tales of First Nations chiefs [email protected] Coyote and co-editor Zena along with transformed passages from Sharman gathered submissions from $15.95 (paperback, ISBN: 9781440187544) • $25.95 (hardcover, ISBN: 9781440187568) Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, them for a collection of stories called Per- 228 pages • BOOK ORDERS: Ingram’s Books in Print Database, or and George Bowering—linking sistence: All Ways Butch and Femme Kwakwaka’wakw traditions with contem- www.iuniverse.com, or via your local bookstore. (Arsenal $21.95) to explore the concepts porary poetry. 978-0-88922-660-9 of femme and butch. “I grew up without a roadmap to myself,” writes Coyote. “No- body taught me how to be butch; I didn’t is for New Star even hear the word until I was twenty years old. I first became something I had no name for in solitude and only later dis- AS THE PUBLISHER covered the word for what I was, and of New Star there were others like me.” 978-1-55152-397-2 Books, Rolf Maurer has received the Jim Douglas Pub- is for Rafique lisher of the Year Award in British Columbia in USUALLY ASSOCIATED WITH A RIVER IN Rolf Maurer 2011. His ac- central B.C., the word Skeena, in Ara-  ceptance speech can be found in Rolf bic, means “Spirit of Tranquility” Maurer’s entry at abcbookworld.com, (Sakina); in Hebrew, the “Indwelling "#$" along with introductory remarks about Feminine Face of Divinity” (Shekhinah); Maurer and New Star by Howard and in the languages of Nisga’a peoples, White. the “River of Mists” New Star was mainly co-founded by (Skeena). Fauzia Lanny Beckman and Stan Rafique’s new, Persky. Maurer started working for tri-national novel the press in 1981. He has been the about a Muslim owner and operator since 1990. Canadian woman named Skeena (Libros Libertad $20), is for Oyama continued on page 35 BORN IN TISDALE, SASKATCHEWAN in 1946, Sharon Thesen came to B.C. in 1952 and lived in several towns includ- ing Prince George and Kamloops before settling in Vancouver in 1966. She has
    chiefly taught at Capilano
    #  ! College and was po-
      #        etry editor for The #   #  

Capilano Review. %%%& '  (( ) The various voices in her new collection Oyama  R     * +%( ( ,&$ , $* Pink Shale (Anansi Sharon Thesen $22.95) include an “in-

33 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 So Many Doors by Celia McBride Gas Girls by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

“Moving, funny, “Dark, ponderous, and thoughtful, inspiring. . . stirring. . . holds on tight and very real.” and simply doesn’t let go.”

—Yukon News, —Steve Berketo, Whitehorse Torontostage.com available now from playwrightscanada.com

“action-packed and fast moving” Jude Neale Only the Fallen Can See Self-Publish.ca CM Magazine The compelling No Way Out journey of a mother Melanie Jackson struggling with bipolar illness. Jude ISBN Neal is putting 978-0-9813164-4-4 82 pgs, PB $9.95 a face to bipolar disorder. Visit our website to find out all NEW from playfortpublishing.ca Kirsty Elliot True you need to know about - Hassle Free Ordering - “Finding the balance-points of self-publishing humour and heartbreak, whimsy “Share this with a class, or better and depth, light-heartedness and The Vancouver Desktop still with your own children” dark twists.” Publishing Centre CM Magazine Kim Barlow call for a free consultation The Lunch Bag PATTY OSBORNE, manager Chronicles 4360 Raeburn Street Don Sawyer North Vancouver, B.C. v7g 1k3 ISBN Ph 604-929-1725 978-0-9813164-0-6 148 pages, PB $19.99 www.leafpress.ca www.self-publish.ca publishing poetry only helping self-publishers since 1986

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for since 1970 See www.banyen.com all our books, reviews & AUTHOR EVENTS 3608 West 4th Ave. O pen year-round with over 25,000 titles plus a great selection at Dunbar, 1 block E. of Alma of Canadian authors, used books, art supplies, and gifts. Banyen books 604-732-7912 & music/gifts/tkts 604-737-8858 V isit us at Books www.galianoislandbooks.com out-of-town orders 1-800-663-8442 250.539.3340 [email protected] Sound Mon.-Fri. 10-9
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34 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 WHO’SWHOBRITISHCOLUMBIA continued from page 33 has three ten-year cycles, starting from a Pakistani Punjabi village in 1971, to La- is for Vaira is for Closed hore, India in 1981, to Toronto in 1991; before Skeena reaches Surrey, B.C. in BEFORE FOUNDING HER PUBLISHING SOME VETERAN B.C. BOOKSELLERS LOOKED 2001. The story of Skeena coping with company Leaf Press in 2001, Ursula askance in September when Sitka Books patriarchical values was first launched in Vaira worked at Oolichan Books for opened its doors on Fourth Avenue in a Punjabi (Shahmukhi) version from Pa- ten years. Her first book, And See What Vancouver in a location vacated by Book kistan in 2007. It has now appeared in Happens (Caitlin $16.95) is a collection Warehouse. Then the owners realized a Gurumukhi edition, from Uddari of three poetic stories about the west coast there was already a nearby business Books in Surrey, and in English via Libros of Canada. The first story is based on her named Sitka. A recent name change to Libertad in White Rock. Having con- thirty-day paddle from Hazelton to Vic- Ardea Books & Art didn’t help. The new tributed to the anthology Aurat Durbar: toria to raise awareness about the gov- bookstore went out of business in May. The Court of Women, Writings by Women ernment’s treatment of First Nations in of South Asian Origin (Sumach Press, residential schools. 978-1-894759-58-8 1995), Rafique is also releasing a selec- is for Yeats tion of her English and Punjabi poetry, Cathy Sosnowsky and daughter Ursula Passion-Fruit/Tahnget-Phal. 9781926763125 Tanya packing pickles Vaira GEORGIE HYDE LEES, A.K.A. MRS. William Butler Yeats, was more Pacific Northwest coast prior to 1800. than an intellectual wet nurse to a gen- Tovell’s impressively sober, extensively re- is for Sosnowsky ius, as outlined in former UBC profes- searched, non-fanciful biography is At sor Ann Saddlemyer’s in-depth the Far Reaches of Empire: The Life of biography, Becoming George: The Life of IN 1992, SHORTLY AFTER HER ONLY BIRTH Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra Mrs. W.B. Yeats (2002). She married son Alex died at 17 in a freak accident (UBC Press 2008). at Whistler, Cathy Sosnowsky Yeats in 1917 when he was 52 and she began writing poetry as grief therapy. She was 25. Her ‘automatic writing’ and ex- also faced the challenge of raising two trasensory perceptions fueled her hus- late-adopted children who would turn is for Underwater is for Weilbach band’s work and made their marriage to drugs and criminal behavior in their into a literary experiment and partner- teens. In Snapshots: A Story of Love, RAISED IN THE RHINE VALLEY, ship. Known to her friends as ‘George,’ B.C. HAS LONG BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT she guarded Yeats’ literary legacy for 30 Loss, and Life (Granville Island $24.95) of underwater robotics! Who knew?! S. Weilbach (a pseudonym) de- years after his death. Saddlemyer has she recounts how she endured loss and and scribes her escape as a child from Nazi Vickie Jensen Harry now edited a follow-up, W.B. Yeats and learned how to turn her grief into art. ’s Underwater Robotics: Sci- Germany in Singing From the Bohm George Yeats—The Letters (Oxford 978-1-894694-80-3 ence, Design & Fabrication ($99.95) Darktime: A Childhood Memoir in University Press $59.95), a 624-page is a follow-up to their Build Your Own Poetry and Prose (McGill-Queens volume, launched in Dublin, where Underwater Robot and Other Wet $18.95), with an afterword by Holocaust is for Tovell attendees included the likes of Nobel Projects, which they self-published in scholar Doris Bergen. Weilbach Prize for Literature winner Seamus 1997. Jensen says she has sold over recalls her surreal experiences aboard the Heaney. 9780198184386 FREEMAN MASSEY TOVELL DIED ON 17,000 copies of that book and it’s now luxury refugee ship the St Louis, on March 7, 2011, at age 93, at home in heading into its 11th printing. The team which she and other passengers were re- Victoria, having written the first in-depth added a third co-author, Dr. Steven fused the right to land, first profile of Spanish sea captain Bodega W. Moore, for this latest project. Ten by Cuba, then by the y Quadra in English. It received the years in the making, the new book is 770 United States and Canada, Keith Matthews Award from the Cana- pages long and has over 500 illus- and her forced dian Nautical Research Society for best trations and photographs (il- return to Eu- book on a Canadian nautical subject. Pe- lustrations by Nola rope, where ruvian-born Juan Francisco de la Bodega Johnston). The textbook is England and y Quadra was the pre-eminent Spanish other countries Linde published by the Marine Ad- Zingaro mariner who vanced Technology Education eventually provided explored the (MATE) Center in Monterey. some sanctuary. 9780773538641 Westcoast Words handles distribu- is for Zingaro tion of both robotics titles. 978-0-9841737-0-9 LINDE (NOT LINDA) ZINGARO has published Speaking Out: Storytelling for Social Change (UBC Press $35.95). Since en- tering the Vancouver School of Art in 1964, Zingaro has been a press operator, a cook, a darkroom tech- nician, and the execu- tive director of two non-profit agencies serving adolescents liv- ing on the street. In Speaking Out, Zingaro interviews fellow social workers and activists who speak out about their lives and work and the con- sequences of doing so. She uses these experiences to put forward ideas on how to encourage and help others in the field to speak freely in the interests of a just society. Zingaro is currently a board member for a disability arts or- W.B. Yeats ganization. She has traveled extensively with his wife in Japan, working with women’s “George” groups and social service agencies for in 1923 the expansion of services to vulnerable groups in that country. 978-1-598744217

35 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 A COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD BCQUICKIES BOOKWORLD FOR INDEPENDENTS

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36 BC BOOKWORLD SUMMER 2011 letters tears. I had heard Sheryl McKay’s North- Gentlemanly wit by-Northwest interview with her in No- Thai hi I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR INCLUD- vember, and immediately ordered a copy I’VE BEEN AN EXPAT FOR 25 YEARS. I’LL BE ing a proper tribute to Eric Nicol in the from our Victoria library. I devoured it in Canada again soon to visit my family. Spring issue. Somewhat similar to your on a ferry ride over to New Westmin- My question: I wish to make a book for description of the “embarrassingly small” ster, bawled my eyes out, and now this. my family. Everything is ready to go in funeral for such a noted Canadian writer, Thank you to Gina McMurchy-Barber. Microsoft Word. I want to transform that the minimal mention of his death in the Her Free as a Bird is a read to cherish. into a beautiful book as a gift for my Dad. Vancouver Sun / Province and even Geor- My own beloved daughter, a teen I just need to make one book. Who does gia Straight seemed puzzling and, finally, who has, until recently denied she has that sort of thing in Vancouver? rather insulting. I have read much of his Down syndrome, enjoyed a visit from Daniel Sackin significant output, enjoyed his humour another young woman who has Trisomy Phitsanulok, Thailand columns in the past, and as recently as a 21. To hear these two, you would assume [For design and prep work, try Vancouver Eric Nicol: always gentle on the mind few months before his death, enjoyed his they are as similar as any other teens, yet, Desktop. Talk to Printorium, on Fort Street last book, Scriptease, (2010). His “gen- somewhat less so, although he softened reminders of the recent past echo in my in Victoria, for printing. – Ed.] tlemanly wit,” as you called it, may have the victim’s ire with his take. ears daily. The language of devaluing, gone out of style, but I think we could I always read his column, even as a the continual judgment based upon ap- Suzuki Critic use more of it these days. Thank good- teenager because he seemed to be talk- pearance, the harsh reality of poverty be- SURELY WHAT DAVID SUZUKI MEANT TO SAY ness there are still libraries which keep ing about the community in which I cause of a chromosomal rearrangement, [“Standing up for Science”], as a recipi- copies of work like his (I hope). lived in a way that I could understand. is just plain wrong. ent of the George Woodcock Lifetime Mercedes Smith Most adults were simply too serious. Al- Ann Auld Achievement Award, was that religion, North Delta though his wife always came to neigh- Victoria politics and business, informed by the bourhood socials, he never did, but he hard facts of science, are the only chance Shocked & delighted always had time to talk to those of us who Woodlands 2 we have to avoid a looming global catas- JUST RECEIVED MY COPY OF BC BOOKWORLD roamed the streets. I WAS HAPPILY SURPRISED TO SEE THE PIECE trophe. After all, hasn’t it been the ill- and was shocked to read that Eric Nicol I’m pleased that you remind us that on Woodlands right there in the middle considered application of scientific had died but delighted with your we forget important influences too of BC BookWorld. What an honour to discoveries that has led to overpopula- lengthy tribute. I guess we never expect quickly. Thanks to BC BookWorld, he has have been given that kind of attention. tion, over-consumption and an overbur- our icons to die, literally or figuratively. his place outside the library. And I’m really touched by the responses dened planet? What is going to stop the I grew up three houses away from Ron Smith I’ve had to it being there. It is very re- juggernaut of humanity unless it is in- Nicol’s place at 36th and Crown and Nanoose Bay warding to know how meaningful the formed spirituality, enlightened politics managed to creep into his columns a few story has been to everyone I’ve heard and socially conscious business? times. Once with a couple of friends for Woodlands 1 from. I must say though, I had no idea Craig Spence being sighted in his cherry tree, feasting I HAVE LOVED YOUR PUBLICATION SINCE MY that it would touch this kind of chord Langley with people. Thanks so much for your away like flightless birds on his delicious “mature” student days at UVic. In the Write to: BC BookWorld, 3516 fruit, and on another occasion for pull- Spring issue, Gina McMurchy-Barber’s support. W.13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 ing a rather stupid neighbourhood beautifully-rendered tale of survival in Gina McMurchy-Barber email: [email protected] prank. We thought it was clever, he the cruel world of Woodlands brings easy Surrey Letters may be edited for clarity & length.

BCTOPSELLERS* Working with Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy & The Cowichan City of Love and Revolution Sweater (Sono Nis $38.95) by Sylvia Olsen. 1-55039-177-1 (New Star $24) by Lawrence Aronsen. 978-1-55420-048-1 Adventures in Solitude: Start & Run a Personal What Not to Wear to a Nudist Potluck and Other Stories History Business: from Desolation Sound Get Paid to Research Family Ancestry and Write Memoirs (Harbour $26.95) by Grant Lawrence. 978-1-55017-514-1 (Self-Counsel $23.95) by Jennifer Campbell 978-1-77040-058-0 Subject to Change (Talonbooks $18.95) by Renee Rodin. 978-0-88922-644-9 Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and The Devil You Know Reconciliation in Canada (UBC Press $34.94) (Anvil $16) by Jenn Farrell. 978-1-897535-06-6 by Paulette Regan, with a foreword by Taiaiake Alfred. 978-0-7748-1778-3 How It All Vegan! 10th Anniversary Edition (Arsenal $24.95) Broken Circle: by Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer. 978-1-55152-253-1 The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools by Theodore Fontaine (Heritage House $19.95) Patriot Hearts 978-1-926613-66-6 (Douglas & McIntyre $32.95) by John Furlong with Gary Mason. 978-1-55365-794-1 The Canterbury Trail (Brindle & Glass $19.95) River Odyssey by Angie Abdou. 978-1-897142-50-9 (Ronsdale Press $10.95) by Philip Roy. 978-1-55380-105-0 Snowdrift (Oolichan $18.95) by Lisa McGonigle Knifepoint (Orca Books $9.95) 978-1-88982-271-9 by Alex Van Tol. 978-1-55469-305-4 * The current topselling titles from major BC publishing companies, Canada’s National Parks: in no particular order A Celebration (Sandhill / Canopy $34.95) 978-0-98666-140-2

Sylvia Olsen (right) received the PHOTO Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for History, presented this year in Powell

SAWCHUK River by the BC Historical Federa-

tion, for Working with Wool. LAURA

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