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A Game to Play on the Tracks: The unravelled sleeve of life **** 1/2
Is there something in the ventilation system of the University of Victoria? In the past five years, two faculty members and one student have been nominated for prestigious literary awards.
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A novel approach: More Reviews of Contemporary Fiction *
I find myself in a bizarre position. I'm reviewing a book that consists of reviews of books that are first presented as lectures biannually in Montreal and Toronto to sold-out crowds. So I'm reviewing a collection of written reviews that were first presented orally. It's hard enough getting people to read book reviews, yet Robert Adams gets them to stand in line to listen to them.
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A plea for the plausible in historical novels *
The American novelist Edmund White published an essay in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement -- the most highbrow review of books in the commercial media -- that addresses issues all writers of fiction have grappled with.
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Best Friends: Infidelity's tired tropes ** 1/2
The literary grocery list of the writer who would like to please critics, if not peers, most typically begins with your standard ration of no-name infidelity.
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Carol Shields: 'I liked to think that women had found one another' *
In an interview, Carol Shields says she was astonished by the success of Dropped Threads, an anthology of women's writing, two years ago. Now, volume two arrives...
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Cat's Crossing: Ding, dong bell, puss has gone to hell *
How much trouble can a stray cat cause?" is the somewhat panic-inducing question this first novel asks -- and readers will be forgiven if they imagine Cameron is lining up behind other broadcasters-turned-writers such as Stuart McLean, anxious to get into a town-hall meeting where he can narrate the wild and wonderful antics of That Darn Cat of his.
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Clarke reaps third prize for Hoe *
Austin Clarke made it a hat trick last night when he added the £10,000 ($22,300) Commonwealth Writers Prize to the laurels he has already won for The Polished Hoe (Thomas Allen).
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Confessions of a Shopaholic **** 1/2
ISBN: 0385335482
Author: by Sophie Kinsella
Publisher: Delta; $10.95 (USD); Paperback - 310 pages
The old writers’ maxim goes "Write what you know." Well, in Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic, she writes what we all know: That while shopping DOES cure cramps, excessive shopping can lead to social disaster.
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David Adams Richards: Virtuoso of inebriation **** 1/2
In close to 20 novels, David Adams Richards has created a rich cast of outsiders, many of whom struggle with addiction. He talks to SANDRA MARTIN about the seductive lure of drinking and smoking, and the love of writing that helped him overcome his own demons
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December 23, 2002: Books for Christmas (part three) *
 Our third installment in a three-part collection of recommended books. Buy them online or at your favourite bookstore. Just a hint: If time is against you, print out the page on which your gift book appears and give that -- along with your pledge to buy the book -- for Christmas.
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First-time novelist in his literary prime **** 1/2
SANDRA MARTIN talks to Mark Haddon, whose compelling debut novel narrated by an autistic teen looks set to be filmed by the Harry Potter team
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Giller winner 'overwhelmed' *
Sales of M. G. Vassanji's novel The In-Between World of Vikram Lall get a boost from high-profile prize.
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Influential author Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84 *
In books such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Hocus Pocus," Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.
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Is this a flair for fictions? *
A mysterious blond organizer of an allegedly bogus writers' conference is alleged to have other secrets, some of which made it into her novel.
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Jonathan Raban: A stranger in Seattle ****
Acclaimed British author Jonathan Raban still doesn't feel at home after 13 years in the Pacific Northwest, but that's actually helpful to a writer who has always felt like an outsider, he tells ALEXANDRA GILL
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Jonathan Safran Foer: 'I hit the book lottery' *
Jonathan Safran Foer wears the wunderkind label he earned for his debut novel lightly, SIMON HOUPT writes. The best part of fame, he says, is that the world is more receptive
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Michael Ignatieff: Writer, thinker, action man ****
Michael Ignatieff is back with a new novel, RAY CONLOGUE writes, a result of 'intellectual post-traumatic shock' he suffered after witnessing the horrors of Bosnia
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Mick Foley: Wrestling with his muse *
Mick Foley, known as Mankind on the WWE circuit, tells REBECCA CALDWELL that giving birth to his three books was more painful than being brutalized in the ring
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More Yellow Dog: The dog days of Martin Amis *
While the fierce satire Yellow Dog has met with some biting criticism, RAY CONLOGUE finds the renowned author isn't about to stop holding 'the wicked up to ridicule'
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Mount Appetite (preview) ****
A wry and witty collection by one of the country's best-loved storytellers, Mount Appetite is vintage Gaston: candid, personal, unabashed.
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Oates harvests fresh delights from Garden ****
But the reworked novel is not the first case of literary history being rewritten
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Potter spoiler posted on Internet *
It was news to the newspapers, but frankly, we found a downloadable copy online at the end of May. (We won't divulge where, so don't ask!)
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Seeing through Glass (Stephen Glass, that is) *
A journalist infamous for fabricating stories has written a novel about a reformed story-fraud artist. Is it 'contrition as a career move,' as one burned editor calls it, or true redemption, SIMON HOUPT asks
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Stay (preview) ****
Here is the much-anticipated novel from Aislinn Hunter, whose acclaimed stories (short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award) and poems (winner of the Gerald Lampert Award; short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Prize) were published last year.
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Steven Galloway: Excelling at Young Writer 101 *
A self-described 'stupid punk' from Kamloops, BC, finds himself with two acclaimed novels and a university job teaching writing.
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The Cave (preview) ****
Suffused with the depth, humour, and above all the extraordinary sense of humanity that marks each of his novels, The Cave is sure to become an essential book of our time.
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The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer **** 1/2
ISBN: 0786868015
Author: Edited by Joyce Reardon
Publisher: Hyperion, $22.95 (USD)
The fictional journal of the wife of a Seattle industrialist; a companion volume to the mini-series "Stephen King's Rose Red."
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The lives of Larry, and Daisy, and Jane *
Larry Weller is an ordinary guy born in the 1950s, who is adapting to society's changing expectations of men as he journeys toward the millennium. He moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, to complete his quiet, stubborn search of self. Published in 1997, Larry's Party won the Orange Prize.
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The Navigator of New York ****
Is this novel going to collect major awards and park itself on bestseller lists for months?
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The Romantic: Raising a glass to the literary alcoholic ****
The Romantic, released in the spring of this year and long-listed for the Booker, is about the relationship between an alcoholic musician, Abel Richter, who drinks himself to death and the young woman who loves him.
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The Scorpions Strike: Green Stone of Healing Book Three *****
The Scorpions Strike is face-paced, action-packed and full of surprises. Just when you think you have figured out where these events might be heading, everything you imagined is thrown out the window.
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The time it takes to be Swift *
It took seven years for Graham Swift to write another novel after his Booker Prize-winning Last Orders. That's what's needed to produce works 'true to my experience of not knowing,' he tells RAY CONLOGUE
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Vassanji: 'I am a person who is at home in many places' *
REBECCA CALDWELL meets M. G. Vassanji, first winner of the Giller Prize in 1994 and on the shortlist for the 10th annual award (he subsequently won it, earlier this week).
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Wolfe in co-ed's clothing *
Five years ago, at the age of 69, the author famous for his natty white suits slipped on a blue blazer and headed off to college. As he tells IAN BROWN, the resulting odyssey led to his latest novel, a tale of modern campus life bound to infuriate students, terrify their parents and incense right-thinking feminists everywhere. . .
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Yellow Dog: Swiftian Amis right on target *** 1/2
By the time he published Gulliver's Travels in 1726, Jonathan Swift was presumed by many to be a misanthrope, a hater of his own species...
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Arabian Nights 1914: A Scheherazade in the Great War *
Eric Koch has been explaining German culture to North Americans for years. The most recent four of his 14 books have been historical fictions with a German setting; Arabian Nights 1914 is the most outrageous.
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Canadian books on 'best-loved' list *
Canadian author Carol Shields's latest novel Unless made it on to the top 10 of the United Kingdom's 50 best-loved books written by women in a list compiled by the Orange cellular telephone company.
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Carrying a torch for black culture *
For a white Canadian provincial coming round, slow and late as a turning snail, to appreciate black American culture, there was no greater revelation than the early-1990s appearance of a collection by a writer named Greg Tate called Flyboy in the Buttermilk.
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Death in the family *
The Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy, awarded at a lavish dinner last week, is an award I have, in the past, unkindly dubbed "The Giller for Nerds." But I have also defended it on the grounds that, although almost all of these books are virtually guaranteed to go unread except in specialized circles (academics and bureaucrats), they are important contributors to the whither Canada? debate.
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Fabricator Stephen Glass: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but... *
was inevitable that Stephen Glass's first novel would be based on a true story. That it is his own is what makes it unusual.
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Giants and behemoths: Abebooks *
Some months ago I wrote a column wondering why the Internet, which was supposed to foster competitiveness, is being dominated by behemoths with few or no competitors - Amazon, eBay and Google, for example.
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Jeffery Deaver's The Cold Moon (Garber review) ****
Fresh on the heels of last year's The Twelfth Card, suspense-master Jeffery Deaver is back with the seventh instalment in his best-selling Lincoln Rhyme series . . .
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Paperbacks for Summer Reading *
Alison Gzowski's selction of your 2003 summer's best bets...
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SARS in HK: On the inside looking in *
In a city ravaged by SARS, CHARLES FORAN has been teaching a course on Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. It's a strange climate, he writes, in which to explore themes of heroism, loss and the triumph of the public good.
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The need for snarks and other literary beasts *
Martin Amis's new novel Yellow Dog is now available in Canadian bookstores, so you can judge for yourself whether it's as embarrassing as catching your favourite uncle masturbating in the school yard, to paraphrase one British writer, or a fairly successful piece of Swiftian satire, as it seemed to the reviewer who, with the dignified restraint so common among Canadian literary critics, evaluated it in these pages Saturday.
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The Time Traveler's Wife: A first novel anointed by Brad and Jennifer ****
Talk about winning the literary lottery. The film rights to visual artist Audrey Niffenegger's first novel were snapped up by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston -- before publication, REBECCA CALDWELL writes.
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Tracy Chevalier: Girl with the pearl history *
Author Tracy Chevalier talks to RAY CONLOGUE about a new film, a new book, and an old label.
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