Matthew Del PapaJerry Lewis Told Me I Was Going to Die (Latitude 46 Press, 2023)ISBN 978-1-98898-962-4 | 200 pp | $22.95 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Matthew Del Papa’s debut essay collection from Latitude 46 Press, Jerry Lewis Told Me I Was Going To Die, is filled with dark humour and needed perspective on living with disability. This collection builds momentum through brief pieces that deal with life and disability, covering Del Papa’s experience with
Matthew TétreaultHold Your Tongue (NeWest Press, 2023)ISBN 978-1-77439-071-9 | 270 pp | $22.95 CAD/ $17.95 USD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Matthew Tétreault’s Hold Your Tongue is a transporting novel. Deftly woven threads span decades within a single family, inviting readers to confront themes of generational trauma, language and culture. Told from the perspective of Richard — a young man caught between rural life in southeastern Manitoba and the prospect of opportunity in Winnipeg — Tétreault
Introducing our September 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Emily Woodworth is a writer, filmmaker and proud descendant of the Karuk Tribe. She grew up in rural Oregon, where she developed a love for nature and the psychological pathologies that permeate small towns. Her work has appeared in EcoTheo Review, Los Suelos, Joyland, No Contact and more. Emily graduated with her MFA from CalArts, and has held fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts and the Virginia G. Piper Center for
In this special edition of USEREVIEW, section editor Jade Wallace reviews three seemingly very different books: a novel, a graphic novel and a collection of poetry. What unites all three is an impossible longing to return: to a time, to a place, to a self that is forever lost. #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Brooke LockyerBurr (Nightwood Editions, 2023)ISBN: 978-0-88971-442-7 | 288 pp | $22.95 CAD | BUY Here It is easy to draw comparisons between Brooke Lockyer’s Burr
Shantell Powell unveils the secrets (and only a few minor spoilers) of Cherie Dimaline’s latest novel VenCo (Random House Canada, 2023) in this traditional review. Content notes: death of a parent, lynching, domestic abuse, homophobia, misogyny, sexual assault and dead-naming. The reviewer wishes to thank NetGalley, for an Advance Reading Copy in exchange for an honest review. ISBN 978-0-73527-721-2 | 400 pages | $35.00 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Cherie Dimaline is the award-winning writer
Lorenz PeterMoon Boots: The Chronicles of a Country Crooner (Conundrum Press, 2023)ISBN: 978-1-77262-081-8 | 120 pages | $17.00 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Lorenz Peter is a writer, illustrator and musician. Moon Boots is his fifth graphic novel and is semi-autobiographical. It depicts the adventures of Lester LaFleur, a free-spirited musician of no fixed address. Lester looks a bit like a country-western Edgar Allan Poe, and he hitchhikes his way across Canada, living rough. It’s
Lisa de NikolitsEverything You Dream is Real (Inanna Publications, 2022)ISBN: 978-1-77133-930-8 | 336 pages | $22.95 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Lisa de Nikolits is the multiple IPPY-award winning author of eleven novels. She is also a member of Crime Writers of Canada, and her most recent novel is a crime story unlike any I’ve ever read. Everything You Dream is Real features mass murderers literally serving time via time travel. The book is a
Introducing our August 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Shantell (Shan) Powell is a two-spirit author, artist and swamp hag who grew up in an apocalyptic cult while living off the land. Powell is the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive Fellow for 2023, a fellow for the Roots Wounds Words Winter Retreat in 2023 and a recent graduate of the Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University and the LET(s) Lead Academy at Yale University. She has a BA in Classics, English Drama
John Nyman parts the clouds and parses the pareidolia in this traditional review of ryan fitzpatrick’s latest poetry collection Sunny Ways (Invisible Publishing, 2023). ISBN: 978-1-77843-018-3 |104 pp | $21.95 CAD / $16.95 USD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY ‘Field Guide,’ the long poem that makes up the majority of ryan fitzpatrick’s most recent collection, Sunny Ways, begins: If I promised you a guideto life in the twenty-first centuryI’m sorry I failed you And, oh boy,
Aaron TuckerSoldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys (Coach House Books, 2023)ISBN: 978-1-55245-462-6 | 160 pp | $23.95 CAD / $18.95 USD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Published this spring by Coach House Books, Aaron Tucker’s Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys is a novel divided in two. The book’s first half, formatted as a dialogue between an unnamed male protagonist and his ex-girlfriend Melanie, presents an extended synopsis and commentary on the 1956 John Wayne western The Searchers — both
Concetta PrincipeDiscipline n.v. (Palimpsest Press, 2023)ISBN: 978-1-99029-349-8 | 216 pp | $19.95 CAD / $18.95 USD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Recounting Concetta Principe’s struggle to complete her PhD in interdisciplinary humanities as a middle-aged woman, Discipline n.v. is a lyric memoir whose page-or-less-long sections often resemble prose poetry. At its most essayistic, the book explores the disreputable origins of modern social science and humanities disciplines alongside their development by postmodern theorists (Derrida, Lacan, Blanchot, etc.)
Introducing our July 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: John Nyman is a poet, critic and book artist from Tkaronto / Toronto. He is the author of A Devil Every Day (Palimpsest Press, 2023), plus book works including an erasure of words and images from the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books (Your Very Own) and a classic text of Lacanian psycho-analysis reprinted in a nearly illegible typeface (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis: A Selection). Otherwise,
Becca Lawlor, editorial intern at The Ampersand Review, reflects on the loneliness between all of us, and specifically The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life, in this traditional review of Rune Christiansen’s latest novel translated by Kari Dickson (Book*hug Press, 2023). ISBN: 978-1-77166-834-7 | 264 pp | $23 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY In its title, The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life by Rune Christiansen, translated by Kari Dickson, speaks of loneliness as if it were
Catriona WrightContinuity Errors (Coach House Books, 2023)ISBN: 978-1-55245-459-6 | 80 pp | $23.95 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Capitalism, climate change, feminism and the gender binary — Catriona Wright’s Continuity Errors responds to these topics with dry humour and a vivid parade of aliens, robots, fae, and more though is still incredibly serious in its message. In this, her second poetry collection, Wright plays with the absurdity of the world we live in, having written
Anita Lahey (writer) & Pauline Conley (illustrator)Fire Monster (Palimpsest Press, 2023)ISBN 978-1-99029-337-5 | 220 pp | $29.95 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Fire Monster is an incredible blend of art forms — in this graphic novel, writer Anita Lahey and illustrator Pauline Conley collaborate to blend poetry with illustration and sometimes music to create a fictional retelling of the 1976 Main-a-Dieu, Nova Scotia wildfires. It details the generational effect the natural disaster had on the
Introducing our June 2023 Reviewers-in-Residence: June 2023 is a special month here at USEREVIEW, as we’re partnering with The Ampersand Review to bring you some exciting crossover content! Every Wednesday, CAROUSEL will be featuring reviews by Ampersand interns Shaylyn Schwieg and Becca Lawlor. Meanwhile, Ampersand’s June issue will feature a rare full-length external review by CAROUSEL Reviews Editor Jade Wallace, who normally only reviews for CAROUSEL. Without further ado, we introduce this month’s reviewers …
Kōtuku Titihuia NuttallTauhou (House of Anansi Press, 2023)ISBN | 978-1-48701-169-7 | 224 pp | $24.99 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Tauhou, the debut full-length offering of Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall, is billed as a novel and at first blush I could not really understand why. The forms that make up this book are eclectic. Some ‘chapters’ are poems, others are fables, though most can be read like self-contained works of short fiction. Characters who are central
Executing an experimental premise in a traditional style, Leah Bobet offers a ‘narrative review’ of Kan Gao’s writing for the video game series that culminates in Impostor Factory (2021) from Canadian developer and publisher Freebird Games. ISBN N/A | n.p. | $12.99 each CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Memory isn’t static — or even past — in Freebird Games’ award-winning interactive fiction series To the Moon, Finding Paradise and Impostor Factory. It dips, loops and
Meghan Kemp-GeeThe Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023)ISBN: 978-1-55245-460-2 | 80 pp | $23.95 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Meghan Kemp-Gee‘s debut poetry collection is billed as “a little bestiary” centred around deer, wolves and the spectral voices of extinct lizards and soon-to-be extinct whales. It’s a description that underplays the sheer structural acrobatics she uses to create — and then resolve — a tense, biting and agile conversation about euphemism, superimposed experience
Rebecca CampbellArboreality (Stelliform Press, 2022)ISBN: 978-1-77768-232-3 | 117 pp | $18.99 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Built upon her Sturgeon Award-winning novelette ‘An Important Failure,’ Rebecca Campbell‘s Canticle for Liebowitz-style novella, Arboreality, uses the intimate losses and incremental gains of a post-climate collapse Cowichan Valley community to create a compassionate, masterfully executed book about rewilding our ecology of ideas. When Vancouver Island’s climate destabilizes, a few academics break up McPherson Library’s collection to save it