Here is where we’ll bring you coverage of books. General criticism, reading lists, editorial picks, and much more!
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The Fiddlehead office receives a lot of books from Canadian publishers from coast to coast to coast to consider for book reviews.
By Sarah Bernstein
I listen to CBC radio quite a bit, mostly because I can’t pay for cable, and I have run through all my DVDs, namely, a four-season box set of A Haunting and some bootlegged Harry Potters with burnt-in Greek subtitles. The CBC, as I am sure you know, has some terrific programmes and personalities (Eleanor Wachtel, especially). There are, too, these somewhat bizarre features, interviews with pseudo-scientist types whose main goal, it seems, is to shame the Younger Generation.
By Sarah Bernstein
At my Jewish high school in Montreal, Mordecai Richler, of course, was a bit of a hero. Whether or not he liked it, and even though he relentlessly lampooned the Jewish community, he was still one of ours. February at our school was public speaking month. So, every February, the teachers compiled and distributed a list of quotations to all of us groaning, gawky teenagers — possible speech topics from which we were to choose. . . .
By Christina Cooke
Commendations on the novel’s thematic triumphs need not be contrived by this humble author as institutions such as The New Yorker, Guardian and Financial Times have safely lionized this text as one of the most celebrated of the past two decades. But the most striking yet undervalued aspect of White Teeth, from my reading, is Smith’s awareness of the constrictions placed upon writing by those reading it — of the insistent and insufferable question demanded ad naseum, “but what does this mean?" . . .
By Holly Luhning
The practice of incorporating historical or “real-life” events in a fictional work is common. But the term “documentary fiction” isn’t one I’ve often heard applied to a novel.
