Tag: Book Reviews

Book Review – The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

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The Buried Giant is the seventh and latest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, published on March 3, 2015, and it is the author’s first novel in a decade.  It follows Axl and Beatrice, an old Briton couple living in Britain after the Romans have “long since departed.” In this world falling into ruin nobody seems able to remember much of the distant, or even recent, past. The couple embark upon a journey together to find their long lost son, whom they scarcely remember. Their travels through this misty and forgetful world threatens their love for each other as it brings them closer to their veiled past.Read More »

Book Review – Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell

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Primitive Mythology is the first volume of The Masks of God, a four volume work by Joseph Campbell. Campbell is well known for his other works in the field of mythology The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the PBS series The Power of Myth. He was the creator of the concept of the monomyth (one myth) — a word he borrowed from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake — which essentially refers to a theory that all mythic stories are variations of a single great narrative, which is made evident by themes, tropes, and other elements common among numerous great myths around the world, regardless of place and time. While The Hero with a Thousand Faces — which I understand to be his most renowned written work — approaches this idea from the perspective of psychology, The Masks of God approaches it more through anthropology and history.Read More »

Book Review – Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

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Invisible Monsters is a 1999 transgressive fiction novel by Chuck Palahniuk, and was his third novel published. The novel follows an unnamed, disfigured woman who also serves as the narrator. She travels across the United States and parts of Canada with Brandy Alexander, her glamorous transgender companion, who bestows upon her many aliases as they rip off wealthy open-houses for prescription drugs to sell.Read More »

Book Review – Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt

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This past week I finished reading Ablutions, the first novel by Patrick DeWitt — published in 2009 — who is better known now for his award-winning novel The Sisters Brothers. Structurally, the novel is a collection of notes, anecdotes, and recollections of the nameless protagonist’s experience working as a bartender in a seedy Hollywood bar. The story explores many of the bar’s vagrant, down-and-out regulars and employees, as well as the protagonist’s own spiraling life centred on an excess of Irish whiskey and popping pills.Read More »

Book Review – Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson

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Why I Hate Canadians

This past week I finished reading Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson, a collection of essays and anecdotes published in 1997 about the author’s experiences as a Canadian, as well as Canadian culture and history more generally. As the title suggests, Ferguson takes a sarcastic and humorous approach, challenging a lot of the points we use to define ourselves as Canadians, often referencing history, contemporary culture, and politics. The print I read was the 10th anniversary edition, with a foreword from the author. It being nearly 20 years since the books original release, the foreword helped to but the book in context.Read More »

Book Review – Sarah Court by Craig Davidson

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This past week I finished reading my first novel of the year; Sarah Court by Craig Davidson. Published in 2010, the book is Davidson’s third novel — excluding those written under a pseudonym. The novel takes place in and around Niagara Falls, Ontario, following five families who all lived on the same block together — Sarah Court. Though not a collection of short stories, it is not a straightforward narrative either. The novel touches upon each family in sequence, never returning to each chapter’s narrator upon completion.Read More »

Book Review – Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

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Though it took me longer than I had planned, this past week I finished reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. The novel follows Carl Streator, a reporter who discovers that unsuspecting parents are reading a deadly poem to their children on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World — an ancient culling song meant to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of the culling song kill whether spoken or even thought. Streator begins a cross-country quest to destroy all remaining copies of the song and save humanity from its disastrous effects.Read More »

Book Review – Red Hill by Jamie McGuire

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RedHill

At the recommendation of a friend, I recently read the novel Red Hill by Jamie McGuire. Set during an outbreak of a zombie virus, the novel follows three characters — Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda — as this apocalyptic situation is thrust upon them and they must struggle to survive as society quickly falls apart. The novel begins with each of the three perspective characters in vastly different circumstances, following them and their respective groups as they make their way to the titular Red Hill Ranch, where there is hope for safety and isolation from the outbreak.
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