John Miedema

An unusual novel. If there is a spoiler in this brief review I am not sure it matters because it is not the plot but the setting and delivery that make this novel work. One, in Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead, the crossover to the afterlife is fantastical and deeply personal, but the afterlife itself is pretty much like this world. People still have their bodies, eat and work and love and sleep, but things are just a little better, enough to make it preferable to this world. …

As a reader, bone and sinew, I cannot review The Book on Fire by Keith Miller, this pure, uncut fix of bibliophilia. To review a book is to claim some distance from it, but having entered this story I have yet to find my way out. I am not looking. Call these words a tribute instead, borrowing liberally from its phrases, written while the spell still lingers.
“Do you love to read?” asks Balthazar, the story’s narrator. Each sentence, almost each word is an indulgence of description, a tale of all …

Prepare to shiver at Richards’ dark portrayal of the intellectual. In The Lost Highway, Alex Chapman is an irritable and ungrateful young man, but he has a measure of intelligence. He uses this small gift to cope with bullies. It takes him to priest school, but he is insincere and eventually derides it, preferring atheism and finding his home in a liberal university. Here, right and wrong are substituted for approval and disapproval. It is a place where someone like Alex can wind up teaching ethics. The politics of the …

Imagine Calvin without Hobbes. Hobbes has gone somewhere … died maybe … I don’t know. His folks too. Place him on a farm, feeding chickens for his chores. Uncle Ken is a good man, but he doesn’t really understand. Tales From the Farm is not about Calvin, but young Lester is about the same age. His imagination is equally fantastic, but missing the necessary props his situation is heart-rending and irresistible. Stark sketches and dialogue tell the story of the deep holes in Lester’s life, and the discoveries that help …

Seventeen year old Marcus and his friends witness a terrorist bombing in San Francisco, and get arrested as suspects by the Department of Homeland Security. On his release, Marcus is terrified but resolved to help his friends. A deft hacker, he sets up an underground resistance movement online, ultimately becoming a hero in the fight for freedoms he had taken for granted all his young life. This quick-paced work of fiction is geared to younger teens, but also a fun introduction to the technology of security and the privacy issues …

“The border gave Danny a start.” Indeed. Danny is the opening character of Yellowknife by Steve Zipp. Danny is not so much a drifter as a young man down on his luck, living proof of the natural law of irony. When he crosses the border into Yellowknife, his adventure begins. Danny is just the first in a boggling lineup of characters. Freddy, his friend, is equally crafty at scoring dog food for dinner. Then there’s Nora, a biologist with an unusual history with gophers; diamonds and gold are doubly dangerous …

It is easy to get nostalgic about childhood and there’s nothing wrong with that. One might expect nostalgia in an anthology of Canadian stories selected by Stuart McLean, the gentle host of CBC’s The Vinyl Cafe*. Many of the stories do have tender memories that readers will share. We think that old people that lose memories, but it is not long into the teenage years that we begin to forget what it is like to be five years old. The stories help reclaim that time.
On the other hand, maybe there …

Pico is a librarian in a city by the sea. He falls in love with a winged girl who rebuffs him because he does not have wings. Thus begins Pico’s journey through the forest, to the mountains, and into the desert seeking The Book of Flying that will give him wings. I revelled in Pico’s fearful and lusty journey. For a time he loses his way in the beauty of books and friends, but of course it doesn’t end there. “Who knows how long he might have stayed in that …

Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay is set in the CBC radio station of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and tells the story of its eclectic radio hosts. Harry Boyd is a former radio talent, who having failed at television finds himself more comfortable on late night radio, only to be thrust in the position of station manager. Dido Paris is beautiful, complicated, vulnerable, and attracted to older men, but not Harry, not really; her voice is almost too perfect for radio. Gwen Symon, just a kid, but courageous enough to …

Welcome to After Hours Investigations, just up the stairs. Be careful, one of the steps has a hex on it. Open 9-5, 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., its staff are ready for the most bizarre of paranormal investigations. When the sun goes does, the shades come out. Meet Evgeny Nightstalk, short but uncannily strong, with a nose for finding crime scenes. He lives alone in his bachelor apartment with his porn and pitcher plant. The truth be told, he’s less a pervert than an overgrown Boy Scout. And he has …

There is enough to grind a bibliophile these days. Publishing has become mass production of feel-good entertainment. Independent booksellers have been replaced by mega-box stores. Serious reading appears to be in freefall. Something has to be done. How far would you go for literature?
In Redekop’s debut novel, Shelf Monkey, Thomas Friesen is a lapsed Mennonite and a failed lawyer. Barely staying afloat of depression, Friesen takes a job at a bookstore, READ, “the first circle of Hell, literary limbo, a publisher’s wet dream, the author’s nightmare. A vacuous, arid, …

The Runes of the Earth begins the third and last chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson. My passion for reading was forged as a teenager with fantasy books by the likes of Lewis, Tolkien and Donaldson. When my eyes first fell upon Lord Foul’s Bane, the first book of the first chronicles published in 1977, I saw that it was another story about a ring of power craved by an evil lord, and thought that it must be another Lord of the Rings knockoff. Wow, was I wrong. Donaldson …

We Three Dragons is a collection of Christmas fantasies featuring fierce and unpredictable dragon protagonists.
In “The Knight, Before Christmas” parents read their children a traditional poem of a brave knight who challenged a dragon and the unusual deal that was struck to avoid bloodshed. The real hero is revealed only after the children are tucked in bed.
In “Christmas Dragon”, Lava the Dragon does not take kindly to being woken from a centuries long sleep by stupid manthings ringing bells of gold. Gold — the precious metal that nests his bed …

Conceit tells the story of Pegge, daughter of the seventeenth century poet, John Donne. The common sense of conceit is excessive pride; of that, so this telling goes, Donne was not innocent. But Donne the poet is historically known for his use of the literary conceit, the juxtaposition of unlike things to surprise and reveal. He used a open compass to depict parted lovers still joined at the soul. The story is about partedness, both parted love and duplicity, and eventual consummation.
The elderly Dr. Donne is dying, or so he …

Short story collections are sometimes considered the awkward little brother of novels. It has been said that the short story is an art form in decline. Given the much-documented hurried lives and shorter attention spans of North Americans today, one might expect the short story to be the ascendant form of reading. But this assumes the short story is a trivial thing, quickly dashed off between other activities. If you are only looking for a quick read, I recommend staying away from short stories. One is never enough and they …