reviews

Ordeal by optimism... Author:  Holly Fitzgerald What should I write about?  I suspect it’s the most common question that comes up at any writing class.  Well, when Holly Fitzgerald signed up for a memoir writing class – with the encouragement of her daughter – she didn’t have that problem.  She knew she had to write about the harrowing twenty-six days she spent stranded and lost on a raft in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest with her newly-wed husband.  I’m assuming she got an A in the class, because Ruthless River makes for some truly riveting reading. It was supposed [...]

 Ursus notorious... Author:  Marian Engel Controversy and Canada rarely travel together.  So when I stumbled across this book, previously enshrined as the “most controversial novel ever written in Canada”, I had to see what all the fuss was about.  Written by Marian Engel – a close literary colleague of compatriot Margaret Atwood – Bear is an adult fable that’s every bit as shocking as it could be.  It’s also a good story. Given the opportunity to leave her humdrum, “mole” like existence behind, Lou – a quiet unassuming librarian – takes on a promising new challenge.  Having spent her dreary [...]

Laura's Coming of Age Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder Little Town on the Prairie is the seventh book in the Little House series and follows the near-starvation depicted in The Long Winter with spring and the end of Laura’s childhood. With the intention of helping Ma and Pa send Mary to a college for the blind, Laura takes a job in town that she loathes (helping a disorganized seamstress in a dingy shop). With this new responsibility and hurried walks into town with Pa, the gaping beauty of a free, sun-drenched prairie remains hidden behind somber walls. The series takes a different sort of downcast turn, [...]