Saturday January 03, 2009
Books: Price wars, layoffs and new works from Canadian stars
Recession-rocked publishers pray for stability
Working-class Boston kid makes good
Even with a new best-selling novel, Dennis Lehane won't let success go to his head
In publishing, the writing was on the wall
It started with angry consumers but ended with book bargains and increased sales. Meanwhile, Canadian authors earned big advances and critical huzzahs
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Kendall Defoe from Montreal writes: The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford should be a part of the conversation. Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess declared it to be one of the most impressive and important books they ever read. It exposes the darkest side of the human animal in relationships and how society accepts such things. Appropriately enough, Madox Ford wanted to call it The Saddest Story. If you are brave enough to handle the truth about the way we actually live, read this slim work of genius.
You can also sample this review
REMIXMaking Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid EconomyBy Lawrence LessigPenguin Press, 327 pages, $28.50Lawrence Lessig is worried about the kids. The Stanford University law professor argued in two previous books that the current copyright regime is seriously cramping creative expression, innovation and, ultimately, freedom.
Mathemagical
ANATHEMBy Neal StephensonWilliam Morrow,960 pages, $31.95Neal Stephenson's latest brick of historico-speculative fiction has rewarded me with many gifts, not least of them a new system for measuring literary complexity. The L.C. quotient, it came to me somewhere around page 700 (this would be about the time the aliens arrived), can be expressed as the product of the total number of a book's pages multiplied by the number of Post-it Notes required to make sense of it, raised to the power of the work's level of sentence difficulty. By that reckoning, Anathem rates an impressive 1.048576 × 1066. (This number can be considered accurate to four decimal places.)
Trinidad at your fingertips
VALMIKI'S DAUGHTERBy Shani MootooAnansi, 395 pages, $29.95Valmiki's Daughter is a readable family saga that conjures up vivid pictures of life in Trinidad, a complex culture rich with tradition and contradiction. In it, Shani Mootoo has created a fabulous character, Valmiki Krishnu, a racist, chauvinist, homophobic bigot who is himself the victim of racism, chauvinism and homophobia. A devoted family man and successful doctor, Valmiki pursues a love affair with a man from a lower class than his own, while having it off with multiple female partners - often in his office while his patients wait to see him - in an effort to prove his masculinity to his peers. Mootoo's depiction of this man is completely convincing; he is weak and despicable, rather adorable and very sympathetic.
Pop-up culture
Pop-up books, long a staple for children (and sometimes their elders) have evolved into an enormously sophisticated craft. No longer confined to the single-limbed stick figure jutting from the page, or the simply configured head of, say, a tiger, pop-up books have become marvels of paper engineering, almost impossibly complex, delicate delights. Witness this winter's flurry of them.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
THE LUMP OF COALBy Lemony Snicket, HarperCollins, 32 pages, $14.99; ages 4 to 8 ''The holiday season is a time for storytelling, and whether you are hearing the story of a candelabra staying lit for more than a week, or a baby born in a barn without proper medical supervision, these stories often feature miracles. Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you'd see, and this holiday story features any number of miracles, depending on your point of view.''
George Grant and other genteel anti-Semites
EXILES FROM NOWHEREThe Jews and the Canadian EliteBy Alan MendelsonRobin Brass Studio,412 pages, $29.95In this volume, Alan Mendelson, emeritus professor of religious studies at McMaster University, presents a wide-ranging, informative and highly readable account of the world of genteel anti-Semitism in the English-Canadian elite from the mid-1800s to the 1980s.
For idlers, slackers and the merely curious
THE IDLER'S GLOSSARYBy Joshua Glennand Mark KingwellDesigned and decorated by SethBiblioasis, 132 pages, $12.95OLD FATHER WILLIAM'S WELL-ORDERED UNIVERSEBy Bill Richardson
A Lady for all seasons
Henry James used everything he knew, including his own complex self, when he wrote The Portrait of a Lady. He dramatized his own interest in freedom against his own egotism, his own bright charm against the darker areas of his imagination.
WE'RE MOVING
This issue of Books will be its last in stand-alone form. Beginning Jan. 10, Books will have a new home, in print and on the web. We'll be part of a Focus and Books section every Saturday with the same authoritative survey of the Canadian
The many faces of Marc Chagall
CHAGALLLove and ExileBy Jackie WullschlagerAllen Lane, 582 pages, $45In an 11-page cover story from Time, in 1965, then 78-year-old Marc Chagall is described as an artist who's seen it all, done it all, got it all - ''pots of gold'' included. His popularity with ''the broadly buying art public'' - consumers of $1,200 lithographs, hot items in those days - is said to have exceeded Picasso's, no small feat. But commercial success isn't a guarantee of critical esteem. By the 1960s, Chagall's trippy renditions of floating lovers, upside-down milkmaids, fiddlers astride rooftops and an array of fowl and livestock, were as likely to be deemed sentimental evocations of shtetl folklore as modernist milestones. Read Jackie Wullschlager's new biography, and one thing is clear: Chagall was not sentimental. If he were, he might have shown up for his parents' funerals.
28 notables
SETHIt's Chris Ware's The Acme Novelty Library, number 19 (Acme Novelty Library). Though this small oblong hardcover is in fact a periodical of sorts, and does contain a serialized segment of a much longer work in progress, do not allow these facts to prevent you from purchasing it. The story within its covers is entirely self-contained and fully satisfying as a complete work. If the number 19 were not displayed on the spine you would have no idea whatsoever that this is but a small section in a grand work to come. And a remarkable work it is.
Roots and romances
10 THINGS TO ASK YOURSELF IN WARSAWAnd Other StoriesBy Barbara RomanikEnfield and Wizenty, 190 pages, $29.95As a tale-teller, Barbara Romanik subverts expectation in a way that feels at first like plain quirkiness; then you start to get it. She's entering worlds that are real, but rarely explored.
Last-minute gift ideas
Blogger Andrew Steele offers up a second installment of books to buy for the political junky in your family
White money, black power
Damon Galgut's latest novel takes place in a setting where no one is what they seem. He's telling us something about his country, the new South Africa
Columbine bests even a 'modern-day Dostoyevsky'
There's still no definitive book or art about the infamous school shooting
The weight of words on his shoulders
The best-selling novelist's latest release, The Hour I First Believed, hinges on the Columbine High School massacre
Letting kids have a reading chance
Kim Beatty gave up her 20-year career in law to found the Children's Book Bank in downtown Toronto. The bank is open four days a week and so far it has given away more than 15,000 books.
Waiting for Afghanistan
THE WASTED VIGILBy Nadeem AslamBond Street, 400 pages, $34.95According to a Chinese proverb, the hardest things in life are three: to love someone who does not love you back, to be exhausted but unable to sleep, and to wait for a friend who never shows. The title of Pakistani-British author Nadeem Aslam's latest novel evokes images of the last of these three afflictions, and in a sense, The Wasted Vigil is all about waiting.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Zachary Jacobson, from Ottawa, writes: Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler's best novel. It's true that the same characters show up in different Richler books. So what? By this one, he had explored these people so well that every page glows. Barney is lovable and articulate, hard-drinking and prejudiced, railing against historic anti-Semitism in Montreal. We come upon Barney as he tells about his life in wonderfully layered monologues. We slowly see that he is telling the story of the death of his best friend, Boogie - or rather, his genuine ignorance of how it happened. We recognize his advancing Alzheimer's disease as slowly as he does. The simple mystery of Boogie's death is solved on the last page, after Barney is too demented to see it. For me, the story of this tragic man is wonderfully illuminating of the human condition.
Killer treats
SWINDLEDThe Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit CoffeeBy Bee WilsonPrinceton University Press,384 pages, $32.50The children of London would have had a trick-or-treat field day, had Halloween been celebrated as a cavalcade of sweets in 1830. Mind you, their palates might have gone a tad awry, because of colouring and flavouring agents that had been added to the candy mix that was already a bit strange by our standards. Bonbons in the shapes and colours of mutton chops, oysters and mackerel were common and beloved by the youngsters of the period.
Poldek's List
SEARCHING FOR SCHINDLERBy Thomas KeneallyNan A. Talese/Doubleday, 272 pages, $28The extraordinary book and famously successful movie, Schindler's List, began with a chance encounter in an ordinary handbag shop, opposite a Hamburger Haven, on South Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Rowling still magical, Potter or not
THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARDBy J. K. RowlingChildren's High Level Group/Bloomsbury, 105 pages, $14.50This slim volume of five tales first appeared exactly a year ago as a limited edition of seven copies, each handwritten and illustrated by J. K. Rowling. Just one of these was sold - the other six were gifts from Rowling to friends - but that one, its cover encrusted with silver and moonstones, was auctioned by Sotheby's in London. It fetched an astonishing & 2-million, considerably more than its estimate of & 40,000. The proceeds were donated to a charity that helps abandoned Eastern European children, Children's Voice, which Rowling founded.
Books that speak to us
The drive from Toronto to Philadelphia is nine-plus hours long, with little promise of any postcard-perfect scenery to punctuate the journey. I have brought Barack Obama along for the ride. His distinctive voice - as familiar now as that of any friend or relative - fills the car as vivid images from his past take shape amid the relentless, late-November landscape of upstate New York. He is reading from Dreams from My Father, his fable-like memoir of his search for identity as the son of a black African father and a white mother.
PAPERBACKS
SPYMISTRESSThe Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agentof World War IIBy William Stevenson, Arcade, 354 pages, $19.99Atkins, recruited as an agent in the 1930s by legendary spymaster William Stephenson, rose to head the British Special Operations Executive during the war, directing covert operations across Europe.
It really does make the world go round
THE ASCENT OF MONEYA Financial History of the WorldBy Niall FergusonPenguin Press, 358 pages, $33Niall Ferguson is, at one and the same time, an eminent scholar and a skilled and experienced popularizer of historical insights. Every university student remembers a lecturer who owed his tenure to a stellar research portfolio since he could not explain the complex and obscure notions that cluttered his mind. Ferguson is no such educator. His analysis is clearly conveyed and grippingly illustrated. In The Ascent of Money, he looks at the entire sweep of recorded human history through the lens of financial instruments, institutions and developments. In traditional academic terms, this is Economic History meets Money and Banking, but the story has never been so well told.
CRIME BOOKS
THE BODIES LEFT BEHINDBy Jeffery Deaver, Simon and Schuster, 350 pages, $29.99Hunting for the perfect mystery novel for the avid fan? Check out this sizzling thriller by Deaver, his second in the past couple of months. This chase story, which pits two unarmed women against a pair of ruthless killers, is one of Deaver's best.
Depressing news
THE RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS AND THE CRISIS OF 2008By Paul KrugmanNorton, 191 pages, $27.50Of all the Keynesian economists pushing for massive and costly New Deal-like government interventions to keep the global economy from plunging into the abyss, none has been more vocal - or more Keynesian - than Princeton professor Paul Krugman. And in The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, he explains precisely why.
Junk, inglorious junk
HAMBURGERA Global HistoryBy Andrew F. SmithReaktion Books, 151 pages, $19.95PIZZAA Global History By Carol Helstosky Reaktion Books, 143 pages, $19.95PANCAKEA Global History
An innocent's struggle to free her husband
HOPE AND DESPAIRMy Struggle to Free my Husband Maher ArarBy Monia MazighTranslated by Patricia Claxtonand Fred A. ReedMcClelland and Stewart, 272 pages, $34.99
Most enlightening
l'Encyclopedie, ou dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers (The Encyclopedia, or systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts) was published in France between 1751 and 1772. There wasn't enough money to publish it all at once, so its existence depended on subscribers, sales and pleading. One of the earliest European encyclopedias, it was, by 1772, 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of illustrations, edited by the writer Denis Diderot and the great mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert. A wonderful work, it can be approached in a number of ways.
'Tis the season to be feasting
This is a bumper year for cookbooks. Every chef and cookbook author worth his or her salt has produced an interesting book. Here are some worth looking at.CANADIANThe appeal of Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes, by Jennifer McLagan (McClelland and Stewart, $37.95), is the superb research McLagan has done on the area of fat. She explodes myths and talks history, facts and fiction with passion. Her thesis is that fat gives irreplaceable flavour to food and anyone who cuts fat from their diet loses taste and pleasure. But the book is more than that. It gives you the building blocks to understand the place of fat in our diet. It tells of cultural associations with fat and gives lots of tips.
Regrets, he's had a few
BITTERSWEETConfessions of a Twice-Married ManBy Philip LeeGoose Lane, 300 pages, $22.95In a testament to the age-old maxim that ''spiritual awakenings are usually preceded by rude awakenings,'' Fredericton-based writer Philip Lee comes clean with some compelling revelations surrounding his first marriage, subsequent divorce and second marriage in his latest work, Bittersweet: Confessions of a Twice-Married Man.
Novel of wartime Japan takes flight
ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRDBy Andrew MillerSceptre, 373 pages, $24.95Oxygen, Andrew Miller's Booker-short-listed third novel, was my introduction to his work. By the end of the first chapter, I was already a fan. Miller's prose is evocative and meticulous without ever crossing the line to overwritten; he writes with empathy and precision to convey his characters' innermost feelings and motivations without judgment. Set in the west of England and California, this beautifully choreographed novel depicts two brothers dealing with the terminal illness and death of their mother.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 122The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 2 210Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 3 312The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 4 -1Scarpetta, by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam, $31). 5 44Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada, $34). 6 54Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, $32). 7 84The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb (Harper, $31.95). 8 63Cross Country, by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $30.99). 9 72Arctic Drift, by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler (Putnam, $31). 10 1022The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown, $28.99).
When it comes to the North, Canada lacks a sense of direction
When it comes to the Far North, at least
Love guru
Alec Greven's treatise on the battle of the sexes is being published in 17 countries and turned into a movie. He's nine years old
The pick of the crop: a boozy mystery
If I were to rate this year's book crop like a grape harvest, I'd say it's a lesser vintage
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 82, working on new novel
Author took a sabbatical from writing when his heart wasn't in it
The man who would tear down 'scaffolding' of Zionism
Former pillar of the Israeli establishment has ignited a blaze of controversy by attacking the 'omnipresence of the Shoah'
Passages to India
In the aftermath of last week's terrorist attack on Mumbai, readings that conjure the heart and soul of a complex place
Christmas gift books guide
From film to music to food, all the best and brightest coffee-table offerings
Did Lady Murasaki invent the novel?
There are two reasons to read this 1,000-year-old Japanese novel.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Paul Macpherson from High River, Alta., writes: I nominate Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. Though he is perhaps better known for his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this, his second, is a sprawling, raucous celebration of the dreams and river-mud lives of an Oregon logging family in post-Korean War United States, a story of the country itself. There are dazzling, unique images on page after page, and there are many, many pages. This now mostly forgotten masterwork was forged in the turbulence of the 1960s, and Kesey's genius does seem, in retrospect, to mirror that misbegotten decade: a raging, gasoline-fed bonfire, oh so intense and oh so quickly gone, now just a puff of smoke on a distant horizon. But this bonfire sears your soul.
The lady's not for spurning
''THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE'' Why Margaret Thatcher MattersBy Claire Berlinski,Basic Books, 386 pages, $29.95Margaret Thatcher was the greatest reformer in Argentinean history; and it could hardly have escaped the notice of anyone who met her that she was, or had made herself, a most formidable figure. Indeed, she seems almost the last politician on the world stage to have had any object in view other than the achievement of personal power. Manmohan Singh of India is perhaps the only contender, but he does not have her newsworthiness.
Blond, brown and very black
BLACK ORCHIDSBy Gillian SlovoVirago, 374 pages $24Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Tolstoy, of course. Anna Karenina. The second best opening line in all of literature.) Unhappy families are interesting; that's why they abound in literature.
Danny Smiricky, home again
ORDINARY LIVESBy Josef SkvoreckyTranslated by Paul WilsonKey Porter, 235 pages, $27.95Shortly after beginning Ordinary Lives, I found myself in my local convenience store browsing the chips rack. After a brief moment, I became aware of classical music floating out from the shop's portable radio, and, after a slightly more protracted moment, realized I was faintly familiar with this particular waltz, and wondered if it might not be Antonin Dvorak. The host of the program cut in and instantly confirmed my outside guess.
Passages to India
Persian poet Hafez once wrote, ''Like a great starving beast my body is quivering, fixed on the scent of light.'' No one expresses spiritual hunger more fervently and eloquently than this 14th-century mystic. However, most of us, unlike Hafez, go on a spiritual quest only when there is pain, when we are plunged into darkness. And at no point in Mumbai's history is this hunger more apparent than after the terrorist attacks that began on Nov. 26.
PAPERBACKS
VALKYRIEAn Insider's Account of the Plot To Kill Hitler, by Hans Bernd Gisevius, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, Da Capo, 256 pages, $17Gisevius, an officer in the Gestapo and the Abwehr, was an active member of the failed plot to kill Hitler, and one of the few survivors. His account of the conspiracy has been abridged for this edition.
Messy, violent, confusing, hopeful
THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVEDBy Wally LambHarper Collins, 723 pages, $31.95The Hour I First Believed is, first and foremost, a heavy book. Both in size (723 pages) and in content. A weighty tome. This is Wally Lamb's first novel in nine years and, even if you suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome and have a hard time holding it, I guarantee you won't be able to put it down. Lamb's first two novels, I Know This Much Is True and She's Come Undone, were Oprah picks, and this one doesn't disappoint.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATIONVolume II: The Kingdom on the Waves, by M.T. Anderson, Candlewick, 529 pages, $25, ages 14 and upTogether, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party (2006) and its sequel, The Kingdom on the Waves, constitute a remarkable literary achievement.
Canadiens and Canadians
THE MONTREAL CANADIENS100 Years of GloryBy D'Arcy Jenish Doubleday Canada,336 pages,, $35THE MEANING OF PUCK How Hockey Explains Modern CanadaBy Bruce Dowbiggin Key Porter, 232 pages, $29.95
We wish you a merry giftmas
FILMBOND ON SETFilming Quantum of Solace, by Greg Williams, DK, 160 pages, $40James Bond never was a man of many words, and nor is this book. With a text limited to a foreword, captions and an interview of actor Craig Daniels by the author-photographer, the rest is a visual treat of hundreds of pictures.
A Japanese Dickens
There are two reasons to read the 1,000-year-old Japanese novel The Tale of Genji. One is that it is very strange. The other is that it is very familiar. It is simultaneously a testament to the continuity of human nature and to the unceasing variety of customs and social arrangements that civilizations engender. Reading it is in some ways a challenge, and yet it goes down easily, in a dreamlike way, not quite understandable yet consistently alluring.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 121The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 2 29Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 3 811The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 4 53Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada, $34). 5 43Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, $32). 6 32Cross Country, by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $30.99). 7 -1Arctic Drift, by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler (Putnam, $31). 8 63The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb (Harper, $31.95). 9 -1Your Heart Belongs To Me, by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $32). 10 -21The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown, $28.99).
Class act
ENTITLEMENTBy Jonathan BennettECW, 270 pages, $27.95Class (and its adjunct, breeding) is a fraught subject, whether in fiction or otherwise. That's because in both tiresome and serious ways it shouldn't, as a means of discernment, exist - though of course it does. Putting on airs is a crashing bore, residing as it does in the upper strata of sin, along with pedantry and its slightly lesser cousin, snobbery.
Bird brain? Hardly
ALEX AND MEHow a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence - and Formed a Deep Bond in the ProcessBy Irene M. PepperbergHarper, 232 pages, $25.95
Rowling challenger changes course
RDR Books drops appeal, offers book that's lawsuit-proof: Publishers Weekly
The skewed meaning of liberty
Susan Perren on 'The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation,
Jane Austen estate overrun with cremation ashes: Daily Mail
Museum bans fans from paying morbid tribute
'Where nothing happens twice'
Godot is a piece of writing that influenced almost every major dramatist in English.
Reaching for religion
SCRAPBOOK OF MY YEARSAS A ZEALOTBy Nicole MarkoticArsenal Pulp, 336 pages, $19.95 Not so long ago, growing up ''Religion: None'' was a strange and tenuous place. I remember the day my grade school sent home forms with information to be checked and then returned, parental signature attached. Waving the envelope, I informed my mother that in spite of what she thought, I was actually Roman Catholic. As it turned out, it was my best friend's form that held the words Roman Catholic. Either I couldn't fathom being different from her or I desired her labels so much that I envisioned them typewritten over mine. In Nicole Markotic's second novel, Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot, the nameless protagonist starts just as young, but goes much further in her search for spiritual belonging.
A Canadian spy story: courage, snafus - and death
UNLIKELY SOLDIERSBy Jonathan F. VanceHarperCollins, 307 pages, $29.95On the night of June 15, 1943, a Halifax bomber roared over a field at Chatillon-sur-Cher, not far from the town of Blois, in occupied France. Two parachutes popped out of the gloom. The jumpers were a pair of young Canadians, Frank Pickersgill and Ken
Literary prizes and judgment calls
The recent controversy over Jacob Scheier's winning of the Governor-General's Award for Poetry is both interesting and dull. Interesting, because it brings up moral and aesthetic questions. Dull, because it brings up the same questions we are often asked: What is objectivity? Can a juror know a book well and still judge it fairly against others he or she knows only glancingly?
PAPERBACKS
THE UNFINISHED CANADIANThe People We AreBy Andrew Cohen, Emblem, 270 pages, $19.99Cohen's ''unscientific, selective and subjective'' point of view is turned loose on the flaws in the Canadian character and remedies for them in the future.
CRIME BOOKS
THE GOING RATEBy John Brady, McArthur and Company, 360 pages, $24.95Matt Minogue has been with us for 20 years and nine novels, and John Brady's masterful Dublin detective is still fresh and exciting. Whether it's the Irish setting or Minogue's eccentric self, The Going Rate shows that this series still has a lot to offer.
When a leftist is right
LEFT IN DARK TIMESA Stand Againstthe New Barbarism By Bernard-Henri Levy Translated by Benjamin MoserRandom House, 233 pages, $28Bernard-Henri Levy is a prominent French intellectual who rocketed to fame on this side of the pond with his previous book, American Vertigo, wherein he followed in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville. Early on, he made a name for himself both as a philosopher and as an observer of the human condition, travelling to war zones such as Bangladesh, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Sudan. His passionate Bosnian advocacy in the 1990s led him bravely to take up residence in a besieged Sarajevo in order to mobilize European public opinion.
JIM BARTLEY'S TOP FIVE OF 2008
BLACKOUTSBy Craig Boyko, McClelland and Stewart, 336 pages, $29.99Craig Boyko's OZY, from this collection, snapped up the 2007 Journey Prize. The book is not so much a cabinet of wonders as a series of them, mysteriously linked. Standouts include the intricate Black Ink, a familial puzzle box of memory and regret, and Black Gang, a dark, thrilling seafaring tale.
William Randolph Hearst: Read all about him
THE UNCROWNED KINGThe Sensational Riseof William Randolph HearstBy Kenneth WhyteRandom House Canada, 546 pages, $35Suddenly, surprisingly, spectacularly, there appears a breathtaking new masterwork in U.S. history and in the history of U.S. journalism, a tale rooted in San Francisco, New York and Havana, a story through which stride such purely American figures as Stephen Crane, Richard Harding Davis and Theodore Roosevelt, and the remarkable thing about it is that this biography has its origins in Montreal and was written by a man born in Winnipeg and raised in Edmonton, who edits a magazine in Toronto.
Great play here: no waiting
Tired and worn from ''the wasteland of prose'' in his fiction trilogy (Murphy, Molloy, Malone Dies), where he tunnelled into his own psyche, Samuel Beckett turned to playwriting as a form of relaxation, sticking to French (as he already was in his novels) as a test of discipline, though the dominant diction of the play is colloquial and imbued with the speech and energy of clochards rather than the sophistications of the French Academy.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
David Emery from Reston, Va., writes: I'd nominate Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking People. That four-volume series has some problems, but as a broad sweep across our common heritage, it's worthy of consideration. For fiction, A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I think great books should be those that can be read by the average person, and even as a math major, I'm not sure I could get through 20 pages of Newton's Principia.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 120The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 2 28Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 3 -1Cross Country, by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $30.99). 4 32Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, $32). 5 42Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada, $34). 6 52The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb (Harper, $31.95). 7 64A Good Woman, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $32). 8 710The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 9 83Divine Justice, by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $29.99). 10 1010The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32).
One hundred reasons to read books
NON-FICTIONTHE SUN CLIMBS SLOW Justice in the Age of Imperial America, by Erna Paris, Knopf Canada, 375 pages, $35In this beautifully written and utterly compelling book, Erna Paris tells of how the Bush administration set out to destroy the International Criminal Court (ICC), threatening to terminate foreign aid unless poor countries promised never to surrender a U.S. citizen to the court. Paris has a rare ability to synthesize masses of material into vivid prose without sacrificing key details, such as how the Clinton administration's opposition to the idea of an independent ICC prosecutor was motivated by the role of Kenneth Starr in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Dad, beware the 'casserole widows'
Bob Morris, the author of Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad, talks about giving his 80-year-old father dating advice
John Updike wins lifetime award for bad sex
Author wins special accolade in British Bad Sex in Fiction Prize but misses on this year's entry
Bye-bye mush. So long, strained carrots
A growing number of parents are giving up on spoon feeding and letting the kids set the pace when it comes to introducing solids
Russian historian, friend of the Royals, classic English toff
Simon Sebag Montefiore's new novel, Sashenka, mines the same rich territory as his highly praised books about Russia
Just her sneakers, a tool belt and a camera
Canadian photographer Naomi Harris spent years on her own dime documenting the swinging lifestyle
Oh, bury me not ...
IN THE LAND OF LONG FINGERNAILSA Gravedigger's MemoirBy Charles WilkinsViking Canada, 220 pages, $32We are all aware of the horror and rot that, in a literal sense, lie beneath the surface of a
Go West, young money
STAMPEDE!The Rise of the West and Canada's New Power EliteBy Gordon PittsKey Porter, 360 pages, $34.95Calgary oilman Jim Gray remembers exactly when the nightmare of the National Energy Program began. ''October 28, 1980, at 4 p.m.,'' he tells author and Globe and Mail business writer Gordon Pitts, is the moment that, for better or worse, still haunts the soul of Alberta.
Romance ŕ la Stalin
SASHENKABy Simon MontefioreMcArthur and Company,540 pages, $24.95When Simon Montefiore imagines a journalist - fuelled by a slug or two of vodka and a vigorous groin - who ''could dash off an article decorated with ringing phrases and sharp reportage, without any real effort,'' he speaks, apparently, from experience. Sashenka is his third novel, but Montefiore cut his writerly teeth on celebrity interviews (he famously coerced the Spice Girls into saying they liked Margaret Thatcher) and dispatches from strife-riven Eastern Europe.
Kids, capitalists and commies
TALES FOR LITTLE REBELSA Collection of Radical Children's LiteratureEdited by Julia L. Mickenbergand Philip NelNew York University Press,295 pages, $39.95 Welcome to a world where Flopsy the Bunny says, ''Smite the oppressor,'' and the Little Engine that Could would say, ''I think I can fight the power, I think I can.'' Tales for Little Rebels collects a great many edifying tales from 20th-century U.S. books and magazines, written from a leftist perspective by authors who in the main hoped to inoculate preteen readers against racism, sexism, bellicosity and the ugly face of the free market (apologies to George W. Bush).
The sanctifying of the 'Nazi pope'
It is the controversy that will not be exorcised. It is Rome's persistent nightmare. No matter what the Vatican does, it cannot still the turbulence occasioned by the debates over Pope Pius XII and his role during the Second World War. Although that role is framed largely in terms of his ''silence'' concerning the Nazi persecution of the Jews, it also involves his perceived reluctance to employ anything other than the most cautious diplomacy when dealing with Nazi and fascist aggression, including the invasion and brutality inflicted on Poland, that most Catholic of countries.
There is no end to it
NUMBERSBy David A. PoulsenKey Porter, 230 pages, $19.95In its sad way, denial can be an expression of wishful blindness and desperate hope when confronting too-painful-to-face betrayal, breach of trust and dire news.
PAPERBACKS
JOHN A.The Man Who Made UsBy Richard Gwyn, Vintage Canada, 542 pages, $23Veteran journalist Gwyn focuses on the politics of John A. Macdonald's era, but also follows the first PM's personal life from his birth in Scotland to Canada's birth in 1867.
Sex, lies and those old-time religions
GRAVITYBy Leanne LiebermanOrca Books, 245 pages, $12.94 THE LIT REPORTBy Sarah N. HarveyOrca Books, 197 pages, $12.95Two courageous new novels examine the taboo trinity of teenage girls, sexuality and organized religion. Gravity, by Leanne Lieberman, earned the Kingston-based author a master's degree from Windsor University, as well as Orca's So You Think You Can Write? publishing prize.
Does anybody know how to deal with political Islam?
BEYOND TERROR AND MARTYDOMThe Future of the Middle EastBy Gilles KepelHarvard University Press,328 pages, $33THE DUETPakistan on the Flight Path of American PowerBy Tariq Ali
A sort-of epic of Boston
THE GIVEN DAYBy Dennis Lehane Morrow, 702 pages, $29.95''People were angry, people were shouting, people were dying in trenches and marching outside factories.'' Throw in the Spanish influenza epidemic and you have Dennis Lehane's summation of 1918, a year that gave onto one that was arguably even more volatile. This period acts as backdrop for The Given Day, Lehane's eighth and most sprawling novel, a tale of labour unrest, corruption and racial strife that strains mightily against the bonds of its own ambition, without ever quite breaking them.
Books for Children: CHILDREN'S BOOKS
M IS FOR MOOSEA Charles Pachter AlphabetCormorant Books, 64 pages, $20, all agesHerein icons abound and are abounding. There's that symbol of all that is northern and wild in Canada (and, let's not forget, Alaska), the moose. There's also the Canadian flag, the maple leaf forever, unfurling, Elizabeth Simcoe, canoes, butter tarts, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Atwood. Each and all have been the subject matter of Charles Pachter's iconographic, sometimes iconoclastic, paintings - viz. Queen Elizabeth II trooping the colours on a moose.
A Muskoka gem
THE LANDINGBy John IbbitsonKids Can, 155 pages, $17.95The Landing is quite simply a lovely book. It's a story about the birth of an artist and also a love letter to Muskoka, the author's birthplace in Ontario cottage country. Written by The Globe and Mail's U.S. political columnist, John Ibbitson, and this week winner of the Governor-General's Award, The Landing is geared toward young adults, but just as easily belongs to the Canadian coming-of-age genre occupied by the likes of Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence.
Success: the complexities of making it
OUTLIERS: The Story of SuccessBy Malcolm GladwellLittle, Brown, 309 pages, $30.99
Inkplot test
INKDEATHBy Cornelia FunkeScholastic, 676 pages, $27.50Near the end of Inkdeath, the final volume in Cornelia Funke's Inkworld trilogy (after Inkworld and Inkspell), Fenoglio wonders if there might be another author writing what is currently happening in Inkworld, the setting of his novel Inkheart. Things have gone dangerously awry in the world that Funke's fictional author has created, a world so intricately detailed and fully realized that it seems real to its readers. A world made more real and more complex because certain people have the ability to read characters out of it and real people into it.
Sexy, salty, sometimes sad
''It is a remarkable story that I have to relate. And were it not for the fact that I am one of the many people who saw it with their own eyes, I would scarcely dare to believe it, let alone commit it to paper.''
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Terry J. Waller, from Victoria, writes: My criterion for a great book is one I can read numerous times. My two leading choices would be Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most satisfying books, and J. B. Priestley's The Good Companions. Unlike most popular novels from the 1920s, and this one was wildly popular in its day, The Good Companions is still a great read.
Champlain, our first multiculturalist
CHAMPLAIN'S DREAMThe Visionary Adventurer Who Made a New World in CanadaBy David Hackett FischerKnopf Canada, 834 pages, $37There can't be many people who have made such an indelible imprint on the imagination and history of Canada as Samuel de Champlain about whom so little personal information is known. In four substantial books, comprising some 1,300 printed pages, five folding maps, 22 small maps and 14 illustrations, he never mentioned the date of his birth, his parents, his education, his early life, his career in Henry IV's army or anything personal of any consequence - except one provocative phrase, that he was ''obligated by birth'' to Henri IV. Not once did he record the name of his wife, Helene Boulle, to whom he was married for 25 years, except to refer to her on a couple of occasions as ma famille.
Humans and dragons and elves, oh my
BRISINGRBy Christopher PaoliniKnopf, 759 pages, $32Christopher Paolini burst into the world of young-adult fantasy literature at the age of 19 with Eragon. While the story of the farm boy who hatches a dragon's egg and goes on to be a hero captured the imaginations of countless readers, the story behind the story proved equally fascinating. Home-schooled all his life, Paolini graduated from high school at the age of 15 and wrote the novel. After several revisions and several years, he and his family self-published and self-promoted Eragon. One of the readers of the original book showed it to his stepfather, novelist Carl Hiaasen, and Hiaasen was impressed enough to pitch it to Knopf. The publishing company, in turn, gave Paolini a contract for a projected trilogy.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 119The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 2 27Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 3 -1Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, $32). 4 -1Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada, $34). 5 -1The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb (Harper, $31.95). 6 33A Good Woman, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $32). 7 69The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 8 42Divine Justice, by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $29.99). 9 52Salvation In Death, by J.D. Robb (Putnam, $28.50). 10 89The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32).
Novel of extinction
BLASTEDBy Kate StoryKillick, 330 pages, $21.95The opening pages of Kate Story's debut are vibrant with immediacy. The dream - of a collapsing bridge and a child's headless skeleton - gives way to a 6 a.m. phone call answered by the waking Ruby Jones. Missing the call, she hurls the phone across her Toronto apartment.
Friedman in fine form
THREE BALCONIESBy Bruce Jay FriedmanBiblioasis, 203 pages, $26.95What a treat it is to have new fiction from Bruce Jay Friedman, this one a volume of stories, a couple of humorous sketches and a novella. Three Balconies brings together some uncollected stories, or stories written since the landmark Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman, published more than a decade ago, and complements an impressive body of work: eight novels, including Stern, About Harry Towns and The Current Climate; five volumes of short fiction; five screenplays, including Stir Crazy; three plays, including Scuba Duba; and four books of non-fiction, including The Lonely Guy and The Slightly Older Guy.
A posthumous masterpiece
2666By Roberto Bolano Translated by Natasha Wimmer Farrar, Straus and Giroux,898 pages, 3 volumes, $33It seemed it might never stop; behind it a trainOf souls, so long that I would not have thought
For writer Hage, it's the same old story
Eerie parallels between what Montreal author experienced two years ago with Canadian book prizes and what has been happening this fall
Matthiessen wins U.S. fiction prize
Author gains second National Book Award for 'Shadow Country' – 29 years after his first honour
Toews lands $25,000 prize
Manitoba writer's fourth novel, The Flying Troutmans, wins Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Mary Lou Finlay: From radio to the written word
The veteran CBC journalist takes up the pen to describe the years she spent as co-host of 'As It Happens'
'A very thorny place to be'
A former member of The Eagles and a long-time collaborator look back on their rocky times with the storied band
A vampire comes out at Twilight
Montreal native Rachelle Lefevre hopes her role in the movie based on the bestseller by Stephenie Meyer will introduce her to a larger audience
Izzy'd be devastated, 'but most of it is his fault'
Peter C. Newman's biography of Izzy Asper comes out just as CanWest faces the music, Gayle MacDonald writes
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
James Elmore, from Winnipeg, writes: Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is surely one of the greatest books ever written. This endlessly challenging book, the masterful prose of which seems imbued with a life force that practically demands the attention of every reader who even tentatively scans its pages, sits defiantly atop the peaks that dot the great philosophical landscape. A towering achievement, it is not likely to ever be forgotten.
Orphans of the New World
A MERCYBy Toni MorrisonKnopf, 169 pages, $27.95Toni Morrison knots language into beautiful and intricate Gordian Knots of complex imagery, and then, in her exquisitely cadenced prose, slices open those same knots to reveal a shining elucidation.
A well-guided tour of time
IN SEARCH OF TIMEJourneys Along a Curious DimensionBy Dan FalkMcClelland and Stewart,329 pages, $32.99When I first heard about Dan Falk's book a few weeks ago, my interest was certainly piqued. Here was a non-fiction book about time, published just six months after mine that, judging from the title, was written from a similar vantage. (The title I almost used for my own book, In the Garden of Time: Unlocking the Secrets of an Elusive Dimension, shows you just how close.) I wondered how he would deal with time travel. Would he write about the end of time? Would he deal with relativity and the enigma of ''now''? When I finally got the review copy, I raced through his book and discovered quickly that yes, he had covered all those topics and more.
The mother of all neuroses
WHEN WE WERE ROMANSBy Matthew KnealeNan A. Talese/Doubleday,224 pages, $27.95Ah, a boy and his mother. Such a potent relationship that can be, particularly with father out of the way. Remember Hamlet's ardent love for the bereaved Gertrude, or Grendel's devotion to his mother. Now, they knew how to put mom first.
Mr. Kurtz's curse
What has brought the latest crisis in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo to international attention is straightforward enough. The conflict there is the cause of untold human suffering: daily killings of civilians, rape, recruitment of child soldiers and hundreds of thousands of people on the run. The UN peacekeeping force in Congo, the largest in the world, has proved incapable of protecting ordinary Congolese from the depredations of the region's political and military leaders.
Who should win the G-G?
NOISE FROM THE LAUNDRYBy Weyman ChanTalonbooks, 95 pages, $15.95THE SENTINELBy A. F. MoritzAnansi, 84 pages, $18.95THE INVISIBILITY EXHIBITBy Sachiko MurakamiTalonbooks, 80 pages, $18.95
PAPERBACKS
BORN WITH A TOOTHBy Joseph Boyden, Cormorant, 243 pages, $20Boyden, winner of this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize,ranges widely - children, professional wrestling, wolves, a native punk band - in this collection of 13 stories.
CRIME BOOKS
BURN OUTBy Marcia Muller, Grand Central, 309 pages, $27.99When it comes to lady detectives, I've always had a preference for Sharon McCone. She predates V. I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone, and she's lasted a lot longer. More than two dozen books and nearly 30 years on, Muller has moved McCone from a 1960s idealist to a highly skilled professional, but has never lost sight of the essential nature of the character.
The fatal disappointments of Lucy Maud
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERYThe Gift of Wings By Mary Henley RubioDoubleday Canada,684 pages, $39.95''Maud had lived much of her life, like her volatile little heroine Anne, between the soaring of the imagination and the ''depths of despair.' '' This sentence from the final chapter of the much-anticipated new biography by veteran scholar Mary Henley Rubio might serve as its motto. The result of several decades of research, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings soars with the energy of its title, but delves even deeper into the darker side of the author's life.
The good news begins now
WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?By Kate AtkinsonBond Street, 348 pages, $29.95Now there's a title for you. At once ironic and curious and apt. As ironic, curious and apt - almost - as Kate Atkinson's brilliant new novel itself.
Eat your hearts out, Thomsons, Blacks and Mulroneys
IZZYThe Passionate Life and Turbulent Times of Izzy Asper, Canada's Media MogulBy Peter C. NewmanHarperCollins, 388 pages, $34.95Here's a tip for most Canadian multi-billionaires and national politicians who think their lives are so inspiring and worthy of emulation that they actually feel flattered to be invited out for an exploratory conversation with the dean of Canadian political and business biographers, Peter C. Newman. The tip is simply this: Don't do it.
It's all in your head - really, it is
THE KINGDOM OF INFINITE SPACEA Portrait of Your HeadBy Raymond TallisYale University Press,324 pages, $30.95Anyone with an interest in what it is to be human will enjoy reading this book. In the early chapters, Raymond Tallis - British professor of medicine, poet, novelist, philosopher - establishes himself as the Shakespeare of the skull. Though I found myself awash in the flood of anatomical detail that Tallis presented, I went with the flow of his charming prose, amazed that anatomy could be so ... well, so engrossing. For example, The Secreting Head, the subject and title of Chapter 2, would seem (on the face of it) to provide but small grounds for amusement. What charm could there be in saliva, sweat, tears, ear wax, mucus, pus etc.?
Not burned, but crucified
THE FIRE GOSPELBy Michel FaberKnopf, 213 pages, $27Michel Faber's eighth work of fiction is sometimes very funny and sometimes almost weightless. Both qualities surprised me less than I might have liked. The latest instalment in a series of works called The Myths (it includes The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood's breezy revision of Homer), The Fire Gospel purportedly treats the Prometheus story.
Feminism's first manifesto
Watch out, here comes Mary Wollstonecraft - brilliant, bright-eyed and passionate. She's doing that ''female'' thing that always drives critics up the wall - arguing from the heart not the head - but her ideas are processed through a formidable and original intelligence. The polemic she published in 1792 is rooted in both her own life experience (which included poverty, servitude and a father who was both a lush and a bully) and one of the most dramatic upheavals of European history: the French Revolution. Out of this ferment she moulded the first great feminist manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 218The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 2 16Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 3 32A Good Woman, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $32). 4 -1Divine Justice, by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $29.99). 5 -1Salvation In Death, by J.D. Robb (Putnam, $28.50). 6 48The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 7 62The Gate House, by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $30.99). 8 98The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 9 54The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $29.99). 10 85A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32).
Big Bear: 'a troublesome fellow'
BIG BEARBy Rudy WiebePenguin Canada, 222 pages, $26There are many ways in which Big Bear, the latest subject of Penguin's tidy little series on Extraordinary Canadians, seems the odd man out. That he's the only Indian chief among the 20 Canadian historical figures is the most obvious. That he's likely the one readers know the least about is another (although Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine might give him a run for his money). The most significant difference, however, is in the byline.
Too listless to finish this headl ...
ACEDIA AND MEA Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's LifeBy Kathleen NorrisRiverhead, 334 pages, $28.50Aldous Huxley, in his essay Accidie, observes acedia as a ''fiend of deadly subtlety'' that could make ''the day ... intolerably long and life desolatingly empty,'' causing a monk to ''sink, sink through disgust and lassitude into the black depths of despair and hopeless unbelief.'' This demon (and Huxley's chirpy essay upon it) inspired Kathleen Norris's 20-year excavation, Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life.
One form of immortality is hers
'We hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living.'
Teddy's tale
A gift from a daughter to a soldier killed at Passchendaele has taken an unlikely journey in the past 90 years, from half-forgotten keepsake to museum piece to narrator in a new children's book - and a symbol of the terrible cost of war
The secret of success* *It's not what you'd expect
Malcolm Gladwell argues that success is less innate ability than birth date and luck
War and Peace
Read it if you want to know why — for good or ill — people will always be willing to fight.
E-VOX POPULI OUR READERS WRITE
Herbert Mackenzie from St. Catharines, Ont., writes: If greatest means pure fun and a desire to spend every waking moment to come to the end of a very long novel, I have to recommend The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett. I had it for months before I started it, but once I read the first few pages, I was hooked. I just bought his World Without End and can't wait to start it.
When the West met modernity
THE VERTIGO YEARSChange and Culture in the West, 1900-1914By Philipp BlomMcClelland and Stewart,480 pages, $36.99Historians have generally stuck to the thesis that the modern world and the 20th century truly began in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War. That conflict, the Second World War, which followed in 1939, and the tragedy they both wrought, have been regarded as the climax of the deadly mix of religious fervour, extreme nationalism, demagoguery and rapid industrialization.
Portrait of the writer as a subcontinent
PLACE WITHINRediscovering IndiaBy M. G. VassanjiDoubleday Canada 423 pages, $34.95Two-time Giller Prize-winner M. G. Vassanji's A Place Within begins in a slightly unfortunate way, with the suggestion that the book is a ''return to the roots'' narrative, a discovery of the India within him. This genre of travel narrative his been done very nearly to death, with African-Americans discovering Mother Africa, Irish-Americans discovering Mother Ireland, and so on. India in particular has had its share of acute returnees (V. S. Naipaul springs immediately to mind).
Tough Canucks
BRAVE BATTALIONThe Remarkable Saga of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) in the First World WarBy Mark ZuehlkeWiley, 289 pages, $36.95THE FIGHTING CANADIANSOur Regimental History from New France to Afghanistan
The polls of black folk
Liberals tend to regard African America romantically: They see descendants of slaves and victims of racism, struggling to compel or cajole the United States to live up to its egalitarian ideals, to finally achieve the truly godly (Judeo-Christian) republic that it tells itself it is.
PAPERBACKS
THE HEROIN DIARIESA Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock StarBy Nikki Sixx, Pocket Books, 413 pages, $23.50Sixx, co-founder, bassist and primary songwriter for the 1980s heavy metal band Motley Crue, tells all about his life as a junkie rock star.
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
OTHERWISEBy Farley Mowat, McClelland and Stewart, $32.99Mowat's memoir covers the formative years 1937-1948, the most controversial of his distinguished career.LOVE'S CIVIL WARElizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries
Imagine there's no Lennon ... if you can
JOHN LENNONThe LifeBy Philip NormanDoubleday Canada,851 pages, $40In early 1958, he was fully the slouched teen rebel, a marginal student and resident trouble-maker. And yet art teacher June Furlong recalls: ''There was something about him you couldn't help but take notice of. ... I remember thinking ''You, mate ... you'll either end up at the bottom or you're going to the very top.' '' He never lost his rough edge, but fate chose John Lennon for the very top. His brimming talent, rule-busting exuberance and pugnacious drive helped the rock band he led gain heights unseen in popular culture and not scaled since. Biographer Philip Norman dives deep into the Lennon legend in John Lennon: The Life.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
A BEAR IN WARBy Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat, illustrated by Brian Deines, Key Porter, 36 pages, $19.95, ages 5 to 8In this picture book, based on a true story, a small brown bear, Teddy, is the central figure and its voice. Just before the First World War, he was given to 10-year-old Aileen Rogers, and went to live with her to the family farm in East Farnham, Que.
Alone again, unnaturally
THE ENGLISH MAJORBy Jim HarrisonAnansi, 255 pages, $29.95It is sometimes tempting to think that all those traffic jams on U.S. highways are caused by the large number of fictional characters out there in search of themselves. The Joads in their rickety pickup lumbering along in the slow lane; Kerouac's Dean Moriarty in that 1950 Cadillac, hogging the fast lane; Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic father and son blocking the shoulder with their shopping cart - it's a wonder you can get anywhere with all those protagonists hogging the road.
Sad, yes, but also unforgettable
YOUR SAD EYES AND UNFORGETTABLE MOUTHBy Edeet RavelViking Canada, 274 pages, $32Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth, Edeet Ravel's first book of adult fiction since her much-praised Tel Aviv Trilogy, is a very fine and moving novel. Perhaps it is strange to speak of pleasure when reviewing a book about the children of Holocaust survivors. Yet Ravel covers this territory in such a nuanced, compassionate, insightful and gently humorous way that this novel, along with the inevitable underlying pain, provides exactly that.
All fierce on the Western Front
SHOCK TROOPS Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918By Tim CookViking Canada, 728 pages, $40In November, 1918, in the dying days of the First World War, elements of five German divisions were ordered to make a last stand in the French town of Valenciennes. They had been weakened by a series of defeats but still had plenty of fight, and more than enough time to turn Valenciennes into a fortress: A canal to the west was booby- trapped, fields to the south and east were flooded to create a nearly impassable quagmire, and machine-gun nests were planted in dozens of buildings. To assault such a stronghold seemed like madness, but in its last set-piece battle of the war, the Canadian Corps swept through the town and brushed aside all resistance. It was a fitting exclamation point to put on Canada's war effort.
Adventures in growing up
DISTANTLY RELATED TO FREUDBy Ann CharneyCormorant, 314 pages. $21The typical coming-of-age story is one of education, a Bildungsroman; such stories emerged with regularity in Germany after Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795). Traditionally, the hero or heroine is young and experiences a crisis - sexual, tragic, familial, romantic - that marks the division between the past and the developing identity.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 15Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 2 217The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 3 -1A Good Woman, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $32). 4 47The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 5 33The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $29.99). 6 -1The Gate House, by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $30.99). 7 89Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 8 94A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32). 9 67The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 10 57Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95).
Do the hustle
SHUCKBy Daniel Allen CoxArsenal Pulp, 152 pages, $16.95How do you describe the measured approach of a muscle car? Here's how Montreal writer Daniel Allen Cox does it on the second page of his invigorating first novel: ''A thundercloud crept toward me in the form of a car I recognized for its slow idle and hungry rumble - blue Pontiac with a stubbly leer. ... A twenty attached to a hand waved out the window.''
Ontario writer wins $20,000 kids' lit prize
Christopher Paul Curtis nabs TD Canadian Children's Literature Award for his 2007 novel 'Elijah of Buxton'
Michael Crichton, 66
Best-selling author wrote Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain blended science with theatrical concepts
An artist's broken heart revealed
Yukiko Onley puts her ex-husband Toni Onley's anguished letters on display
'Iron Man' lifts Marvel results
But 2009 financial performance will be ‘modest' due to lower Spider-Man, toy revenue
That oldster black magic
THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICKBy John UpdikeKnopf, 308 pages, $27.95As I began reading John Updike's 22nd novel (and 59th book), The Widows of Eastwick, two images kept haunting me. First was that of the prolific genius, a Mozart or a Henry James, whose art gushes where other people's trickles. Sure, for every Requiem or The Golden Bowl there's a sugary divertimento or a Guy Domville. But the overall oeuvre is secure, and hundreds of years from now, reviewers will resemble a few prickly urchins washed deep down under those great seas of accomplishment.
Othello in Yorkshire
ALL THE COLOURS OF DARKNESSBy Peter RobinsonMcClelland and Stewart,352 pages, $29.99At some point in the 1980s, the hardboiled private eye migrated to Britain, acquired a warrant card and an extensive music collection, and mutated into Inspector iPod. The formula has proved a very effective one: The landscape of crime fiction would be a far less interesting place without Ian Rankin's Rebus, John Harvey's Resnick and, of course, Peter Robinson's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks.
As the sky falls
Although a few recent films indicate society's growing unease with the state of the world (I am Legend and The Happening, with The Road slated for release in 2009), it has always fallen to the novelist to capture and shape the zeitgeist's visions of the end of the world (''as we know it'' - if we're lucky). Indeed, it's tough to think of science fiction existing at all without this evocative theme.
Please, Mr. Martin, a detail, a crumb
HELL OR HIGH WATERMy Life In and Out of PoliticsBy Paul MartinMcClelland and Stewart,494 pages, $37.99It is a rather too-perfect illustration of the no-longer-novel concept of the memoir as politics by other means. Hell or High Water: My Life In and Out of Politics is almost certainly quite the last instalment of the Chretien-Martin wars, that decade-long internal struggle for mastery of the Liberal Party.
PAPERBACKS
THE SUMMER THAT NEVER WASBy Peter Robinson, McClelland and Stewart, 445 pages, $11.99Chief Inspector Alan Banks is recalled from recuperation in Greece when the bones of a childhood friend are dug up 35 years after the summer of his disappearance, and must deal with a long-held guilty secret.
Were the Nazis their own worst enemies?
HITLER'S EMPIREHow the Nazis Ruled EuropeBy Mark MazowerPenguin Press, 726 pages, $44''Any thought of world policy is laughable,'' Hitler once ruminated, ''until we are masters of the continent. ... Once we are the masters in Europe, then we will enjoy the dominant position in the world.''
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
LOVE'S CIVIL WARElizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries1941-1973Edited by Victoria Glendinning with Judith Robertson, McClelland and Stewart, $35A passionate affair in wartime London, between a star Canadian diplomat and a distinguished British writer, goes on for three decades.
CRIME BOOKS
THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORKBy Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds, Knopf Canada, 409 pages, $29.95I've exhausted my collection of superlatives for Fred Vargas's marvellous and inventive novels, set in Paris and featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. For this fifth Adamsberg novel to be published in English, I can only say that Vargas continues to amaze me with her wacky characters and mind-expanding plots.
Grandma, we hardly knew you
MARIE-ANNEThe Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's GrandmotherBy Maggie SigginsMcClelland and Stewart,328 pages, $32.99In an unassuming footnote near the beginning of Marie-Anne: The Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's Grandmother, Maggie Siggins, acclaimed historiographer, offers an unintentionally telling anecdote: Throughout the western Canadian push of his journey to find the elusive China Sea, Jean Nicollet (1598-1642), ''theatrical'' explorer and fur trader, would typically bound from his canoe, brandish a pair of loaded pistols, and flourish a lushly designed, Asian-inspired capote (cloak) ''made of Chinese material, red with embroidered blue dragons and yellow peonies'' - all in an effort to impress that (strangely elusive) Chinese emperor he'd wholly expected to meet.