Hollay Ghadery has a fine ear for the complex orchestration of dualities in Sing, Nightingale, the latest novel by Marie Hélène Poitras, translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins (Coach House Books, 2023). ISBN 978-1-55245-448-0 | 176 pp | $22.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Arguably, all books aim to transport readers to another world, but not all books can do this as self-reflexively and immersively as Sing, Nightingaleby Marie Hélène Poitras (translated from the
Wayne NgThe Family Code (Guernica Editions, 2023)ISBN 978-1-77183-793-4 | 316 pp | $25 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY The Family Code by Wayne Ng is a riveting and heart-wrenching story of inter-generational trauma that pivots around Hannah and her young son, Axel. Hannah and Axel live in poverty and are both victims of abuse: Hannah, at the hands of her father and partners; Axel, at the hands of his mother. Interestingly, the novel is narrated
Khashayar MohammadiWJD (Gordon Hill Press, 2022)ISBN 978-1-77422-070-2 | 68 of 138 pp* | $20 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Khashayar Mohammadi’s second full-length collection of poetry, WJD, is an absorbing phenomenological exploration of language, culture, country and spirit. While rangy, roaming different literal and figurative landscapes from Iran to “pre-cosmic” nothingness, the poems are singular in their bubbling richness; an intensity that punches as it delights, plucks at the darkness but also, proffers a hard-won
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
SJ SinduDominant Genes (Black Lawrence Press, 2022)ISBN 978-1-62557-717-7 | 37 pp | $9.95 USD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Dominant Genes is one of the latest chapbooks by Tamil diaspora writer SJ Sindu, published by Black Lawrence Press. This genre-bending book is playful and fierce; stark and lyrical; tender and packed with satisfying, full-blooming rage. Sindu examines many facets of her life in Dominant Genes, including sex and sexuality, genderqueerness and the hold of familial and
Ashley-Elizabeth BestAlignment (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2021)ISBN 978-1-98946-309-3 | 29 pp | $12 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY There’s violence in interpretation, and Alignment — a chapbook by disabled poet and essayist Ashley-Elizabeth Best, published by Rahila’s Ghost Press — sheds light on this violence with stunning and shattering insight. Not only does Best explore how language is interpreted, but she also explores the way in which a suffering mind and body are (mis)interpreted through language,
Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Emily Anglin, Devon Code and Lee HendersonDisintegration in Four Parts (Coach House Books, 2021)ISBN 978-1-55245-424-4 | 206 pp | $21.95 CAD — BUY here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Starting with the sentence, “all purity is created through resemblance and disavowal,” Disintegration in Four Parts by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Emily Anglin, Devon Code and Lee Henderson explores the notion of purity in four novellas that are distinct in terms of narrative style, but harmonious in their
Hollay Ghadery converts Gillian Wigmore’s trifecta of novellas Night Watch: The Vet Suite (Invisible Publishing, 2021) into (32) tercets, each comprising a prime number of syllables, in this mathematically perfect, verse-form experimental review. ISBN 978-1-988784588 | 152 pp | $19.95 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Heifer I don’t want to doit again — I want to doit in reverse: do what I couldn’t dothe first time. See with the slowgaze of cattle, their genuflect feyness,it’s in all
Hollay Ghadery both employs and subverts the expected repetitions of a pantoum to confront the shifting recurrent patterns that characterize humankind’s ambivalent responses to environmental disaster in this experimental review of Blaze Island (Goose Lane Editions, 2020), the fifth novel of Catherine Bush. In both content and form, Ghadery’s review at once affirms the concerns at the crux of Bush’s work while also grappling with the daunting reality that words are not action, that text