Book Review
The Desirable Sister
When two members of Vancouver’s Gujarati Indian community marry, they have no idea that their daughters, Gia and Serena, are destined to complete the cycle of sororial tension begun in their mother’s generation. These sisters come...
Book Review
Silence of the Chagos
Beyond the Maldives is an archipelago containing fifty-six islands clustered in seven atolls, the Chagos. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the inhabitants of these islands became permanently homeless. Shenaz Patel’s "Silence of the...
Book Review
Outback
In Dan Kainen and Ella Morton’s "Outback", Photicular illustrations pair with text, resulting in accessible infographics that amaze, educate, and delight. The definition of the Outback itself is rich and complex. With no determined...
Book Review
...and Other Disasters
If home is where the heart is, Malka Older’s science fiction collection …and Other Disasters finds it in a “dappled world” where darkness and light play with abandon. In this engrossing work, the heart survives its “twinned...
Book Review
Divide Me by Zero
Katya Geller has been making her living as a writer for the past twelve years, all the more impressive because she’s a Russian immigrant writing in English. But making a living as a writer requires you to write, and now she’s stalled...
Book Review
Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River
Cult favorite Jung Young Moon’s "Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River" is a meditation on the nature of existence that’s mediated through the question of what constitutes a novel. It is a “story about Texas, but at the same time, a...
Book Review
The Scent of Buenos Aires
There’s something a little mysterious at work in Hebe Uhart’s "The Scent of Buenos Aires", but it’s the ordinary mystery of other people. These thirty-eight short stories function like a panopticon, each dipping into one person’s...
Book Review
Mostarghia
“Nietzche was right. It’s upon the death of those one loves that they become for us a shining star,” admits Maya Ombasic in her memoir, "Mostarghia". Ombasic was twenty-seven years old when her father died—the same age he was...