Joel Yanofsky and his wife share an Asshole List – a running tab of fathers who are even worse than he is. When they meet a new one or hear stories, Joel looks so good in comparison that rare marital sex ensues. Hey, I’m only reporting what I read.
In his recent book, Alvin R. Mahrer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa, explains his distinctive approach to the analysis of personality, which he calls the “experiential approach.”
The conventional wisdom is that history is told from the perspective of the victors. But in Canada the “winning” side doesn’t always control the narrative.
There is a whole branch of philosophy about the Just War, but Dimitri Nasrallah remains sceptical. “Ultimately, war is chaos,” the Montreal author says. “The vast majority of people are caught in the middle. They’re waiting for the shelling to die down so they can go to the store, hoping that the electricity doesn’t cut off long enough for their food to go bad or that a bullet doesn’t come through their window.”
"I like snapshots,” Gillian Sze says brightly. There is a plate of charmingly small cookies between us, and she is taking a picture of them with her phone. "I like trying to crystallize moments or little details. But then again, maybe all poets are trying to do that."
How many kids can you shoot?” asks Lt.-Gen. the Honourable Roméo Dallaire (ret’d), fixing me with a penetrating blue stare. “Even under the mandate of protecting other people? Or under the international law of self-defence?”
Subtle Bodies is a fascinating little book, a “fictional biography” that takes as its inspiration the life of René Crevel – French writer, idealist, communist, and occasional medium.
The mid-twentieth-century German writer Walter Benjamin said: “All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one: they are, in other words, special cases.” As we lurch into the twenty-first century, one thing that surely connects us to the most change-defined century in human history is invention through the blending of distinctions. Hybridization is not just for rose bushes anymore.
One of the delights of reading fiction is that it lets you travel at practically no cost to places you would otherwise never see. Of Water and Rock, Thomas Armstrong’s debut novel, takes readers to modern-day Barbados, but not the Barbados of glossy travel brochures featuring beaches and resort hotels. This is behind-the-scenes Barbados, in the private homes and lives of the locals.
