USEREVIEW 104: A Search for Another Ending

USEREVIEW 104: A Search for Another Ending

In this traditional review, Marcie McCauley assesses the successes of Victoria Hetherington’s sophomore novel Autonomy (Dundurn Press — Rare Machines imprint, 2022) within the context of a history of literature about human-AI interaction. ISBN 978-1-45974-847-7  | 272 pp | $23.99 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY One of the characters at the heart of Victoria Hetherington’s Autonomy is a reader with a habit of peering into stories to find new ways of being. “All the female

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USEREVIEW 103: Prolong, in Fragments

USEREVIEW 103: Prolong, in Fragments

In this traditional review, Hollay Ghadery gets out the microscope to peer closely at rob mclennan’s latest poetry collection the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). ISBN 978-1-77385-261-4  | 120 pp | $19.99 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY rob mclennan’s newest poetry collection, the book of smaller, is an impressive exercise in compression. Like so many of my favourite poets, mclennan excels at distilling sentiment into something, if not more pure, at least

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USEREVIEW 102: Pulsing Light

USEREVIEW 102: Pulsing Light

Kate Finegan finds the love and courage that bloom like flowers among ruins in this traditional review of Deirdre Danklin’s debut novella Catastrophe (Texas Review Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize. ISBN 978-1-68003-273-4 | 186 pp | $19.95 USD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY In Deirdre Danklin’s debut novella, Catastrophe, two friends separated by time and distance communicate telepathically while waiting out a catastrophe that has made population centres uninhabitable. The unnamed

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USEREVIEW 101: The Poet and the Singer

USEREVIEW 101: The Poet and the Singer

In a departure from our usual focus on indie presses and authors who aren’t already famous millionaires, we present Daniel Hinds‘ experimental prose poem review of Lana Del Rey‘s debut poetry collection Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass (Simon & Schuster, 2020). Why did we break our own unspoken rules on which books we prioritize for reviews? Probably because we feel that what’s happening in this review is something much more than direct commentary on

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USEREVIEW 100: Five from ‘CONUNDRUM 25’

USEREVIEW 100: Five from ‘CONUNDRUM 25’

Happy anniversary to us, it’s our 100th review! In this sweeping traditional review of five books, reviewer Mark Laliberte takes on a handful of early samples from Conundrum Press’ Conundrum 25, a series of graphic short stories, each presented as a small volume of its own, in honour of the publisher’s 25th anniversary. Joe OllmannDay Old (2021) — #1 in the Conundrum 25 SeriesISBN 978-177262-058-0 | 107 pp, 4.25 x 6.25 in | $10 CAD

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