There’s a ubiquitous template for many contemporary novels and it goes something like this: “an inspiring story of an oppressed protagonist who overcomes all odds and discovers herself.” Anna Porter’s Gull Island, however, is truer to life than to aspirational, preachy fiction. It’s the story of a profoundly dysfunctional family and thirty-something Jude Bogdan’s stumbling, alcohol-drenched quest to make sense…
Tag: Canadiana
In this scene from Margaret Laurence’s novel The Stone Angel, the elderly Hagar Shipley has escaped from her son Marvin’s house, in order to avoid being placed in a nursing home. She finds refuge in an abandoned building in the forest, along the coast. She has nothing but rainwater to drink until a stranger appears — Murray Ferney Lees. Hagar…
When I’m struck by the work of an author, I’m inclined to learn more about their life. My interest is only heightened by the sense of mystery that surrounds the generations of authors writing before social media — when there wasn’t the same pressure to disclose everything, to opine on all subjects and to talk as much about the author,…
At first glance it’s tough to like Hagar Shipley — the narrator of Margaret Laurence’s 1964 novel, The Stone Angel. This harsh, aloof woman is quick to judge and slow to forgive and understand. Yet she’s also self-aware; it’s her sense of quiet remorse that makes her likeable. And in Hagar’s twilight years, her fragility and vulnerability — her desperate…
It’s a unique event in the life of a Roman Catholic parish when a Canadian university press publishes a monograph on one of its ministries. In fulfilling its mission over the past 30 years, the St. Joe’s Refugee Outreach Committee (ROC) has, of course, extended far beyond the boundaries of its home parish — helping to settle more than 200…
How do we find solace amidst grief and turmoil, especially when we struggle to believe in a God who lends order to existence? That question forms the basis of Michael Ignatieff’s newest book. He begins his journey by exploring the Psalms, the Old Testament story of Job and the life of the Apostle Paul. In this survey-style presentation of western…
Canadian author Kathy Clark’s new novel Ivan’s Choice tells a Holocaust story set in a country four thousand miles away. The Holocaust remains the most jarring period in living memory, at least in the West, but a memory that is fading as the number of elderly survivors dwindle. These two aspects of the novel’s setting — a distant time and…
Memory is a peculiar thing. I attended Montreal’s Concordia University during the same years as Yves Engler. Reading his book — part memoir, part explanation of what may draw Canadian youth to embrace radical activism — brought long forgotten memories to the surface, including events that seemed so momentous at the time and once consumed my thoughts, but which nearly…
Ottawa-based freelance author and poet Jagjeet Sharma’s newly released anthology Fragments offers poetry that straddles and explores the crossroads of traditional and contemporary society, as well as East and West. Our cultural roots and memories colour how we live in the present day. Sharma’s poetry is cognizant that time forms a continuum and as such, the past bleeds into the present.…
Benoit Chartier, the Ottawa area author of the anthology The Calumnist Malefesto, breaks the negative stereotypes often attached to self-publishing, offering readers a skillfully edited collection of engaging and atmospheric prose. Each story is unique, the themes diverse and the language varied–the latter adjusted to fit the tone of the given narrative. There is a reflective morality and spirituality that runs…