It’s that time of the year when I take a closer look at 2020’s reading plans and shuffle some of the reading that I was sure I’d have finished by now into the coming year instead. Nothing seems impossible yet, because I still think of December as an incredibly
If Bird doesn’t know Thumps Dreadfulwater, someone should introduce them. Both men are photographers, indigenous (they’d probably say ‘Indian), and diabetic. Both have had longterm relationships—with cats, as well as women, and they would consider dessert their favourite food group. They’re simultaneously interested enough in the world to strike
From the opening lines of Five Little Indians, debut author Michelle Good prepares readers. There are snares and ghosts, silvery and summery glimmers, and there is also warmth. (There’s also the requisite discussion of semantics—‘Indian’ or ‘Aboriginal’—reminding readers that nomenclature and self-identification is not a matter of consensus in
There’s a shadow over Cherie Dimaline’s latest novel, Empire of Wild (2019). Part of it could appear in a history text: “In the church and at his Catholic day school, the priests called seven the age of reason. Moshom called it the age of learning how the hell to
In which I discuss the skinny books that slip into my bookbag while the heavier, cumbersome volumes (like Ian Urbina’s The Outlaw Ocean and Flannery O’Connor’s letters) stay home. Thirty-eight chapters and under 200 pages: Didier Leclair’s This Country of Mine (2003; Trans. Elaine Kennedy, 2018) issues an
