Review by Taryn Grant To the Back Of Beyond by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hoffman Other Press, 2017 At first pass the title reads with a satisfying punch and clarity: To the Back of Beyond. On further scrutiny,...
We are happy to announce that our annual PRISM international Non-Fiction Contest is now open for submissions. We are absolutely delighted to introduce our judge from across the pond: Jonathan Kemp! Jonathan Kemp’s debut novel London Triptych (Myriad, 2010) was acclaimed...
Heart Berries
Terese Marie Mailhot
Doubleday Canada
Review by Cody Caetano
Often when I’m reading memoir, I’ll remember a quote from a misguided Neil Genzlinger, who penned “The Problem With Memoirs” for The New York Times in 2011: “There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir… Sure, [Amazon] has authors who would be memoir-eligible under the old rules. But they are lost in a sea of people you’ve never heard of” (italics mine). It is important to note that marginalized memoirists, especially early-career Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, and queer folks, have fraught histories with Genzlinger-types, their “old rules” and antiquated tastes that mar the merit of writing, publishing, and participating in the predominantly white spaces of the literary world. And then along comes Terese Marie Mailhot, a Salish First Nation woman from Seabird Island Indian Reservation with the assertion that memoir “functions as something vulnerable in a sea of posturing” (137). And it is in vulnerability that Mailhot effectively rejects the moth-eaten straightjacket that would otherwise restrict the inventive, decolonial confession of Heart Berries.
Continue reading Decolonial Confession: A Review of Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries
The Boat People
Sharon Bala
Penguin Random House
Review by Anjalika Samarasekera
In the second half of The Boat People, a Sri Lankan immigrant—and former Tamil Tiger—poses a question to his Canadian-born niece: “What do you think happens when you terrorize a people, force them to flee, take away their options then put them in a cage all together?” (230).
The question is the ravaged heart of Sharon Bala’s remarkable debut novel, which chronicles the arrival of around 400 Tamil refugees on the coast of British Columbia in 2010. The refugees have fled persecution in Sri Lanka following the end of the twenty-six-year civil war and have come to Canada hoping for a warm welcome. These hopes are dashed when the Canadian government detains the refugees on the suspicion that some of them belong to the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers, a listed terrorist organization. Eventually, some refugees are released and deemed “admissible” to Canada while others are deported back to Sri Lanka.
Continue reading The Survival of Arrival: A Review of Sharon Bala’s The Boat People
Chelene Knight’s debut poetry collection, Braided Skin, was celebrated as a vibrant telling of mixed ethnicity and urban childhood poverty. Her sophomore book Dear Current Occupant, a creative nonfiction memoir, is a nuanced account of growing up in Vancouver’s Downtown...
The Midwife of Torment Paulo Da Costa Guernica Editions Review by Jessica Barratt Weaving many flash-fiction works into a single, bound narrative, Paulo Da Costa’s The Midwife of Torment paints humanity in its honest bright colours and oscillating emotions of...
Review by Rachel Jansen It would be a mistake to assume Cason Sharpe’s slim debut, Our Lady of Perpetual Realness & Other Stories, is a quick read. These stories are dense and complex, deserving of a slow eye and...
Demi-Gods
Eliza Robertson
Penguin Random House, 2017
Review by Kyle Schoenfeld
Eliza Robertson’s debut novel Demi-Gods is the story of Willa, a girl growing up in British Columbia in the 1950s and ‘60s. In luminous prose, Robertson shows her protagonist’s formation in a world set on teaching her about others’ power to shape her. Willa finds this restrictive power crystallized in Patrick, the son of her mother’s boyfriend and a monstrous presence who slinks into rooms and haunts the summers of the narrator’s childhood. As a parable of the oppressive weight of other people’s desire, Demi-Gods is lush and compelling, however unsettling it may be to read.
Continue reading Mirrored Bodies: Reflecting on Eliza Robertson’s Demi-Gods
Project Compass
Lizzie Derksen, Matthew Stepanic, Kristina Vyskocil, Robert Strong
Monto Books, 2017
Review by Peter Takach
What do you get when you take four emerging Edmonton writers and give them each a quadrant of their city to explore? In Project Compass, publisher and editor Jason Lee Norman has assembled a crack crew to take readers on an odyssey through a city that, despite producing its fair share of writers, is rarely the explicit setting of their stories. The result is an engaging and emotionally-arresting collection of four concurrent novellas that all unwind on June 21, 2016. Starting from the north, south, east, and west, we follow four Edmontonians as they wander their way through the longest day of the year and reflect on the paths they have taken.
Continue reading Despite the Odds: a Review of Project Compass