April 30, 2012
Read my review of the book which took Europe by storm proclaiming that new ‘naturalist’ mothering protocols are bad for women and bad for birth rates: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-conflict-by-elisabeth… Read an article by Slate author Katie Allison Granju about Badinter’s conflict of interest as part owner and Board Chairman of Publicis, advertising agency for Nestle and other […]
February 5, 2012
Who do we think we’re telling the story of ourselves to? Do other people live, as I do, with the vague sense that the story of my life is performed in front of a witness other than myself? In my case, I wonder, is it some notion of God? Is it a residue structure from […]
October 28, 2011
On the way back from taking Henry to try and launch a golf career, I sit in the airplane and look out the window, my hand jammed under the belt line of my jeans.Why is that belly fat always cold?That belly was swimming in the salty, warm, turquoise ocean of the Florida Gulf Coast only […]
August 1, 2011
The Globe and Mail, July 2, 2011 Unnatural SelectionBy: Mara HvistendahlPublisher: Public Affairs, 314 pages, $26.99 As every woman who has had an amniocentesis test knows, the procedure is a haunting and morally uncomfortable one. A long needle penetrates the taut skin of the pregnant belly and a hard-edge white line shows up on the ultrasound screen […]
July 31, 2011
The Globe and Mail, September 23, 2010 Breathing the PageBy: Betsy WarlandPublisher: Comorant, 166 pages, $20 I’ve been going through a wordless patch. This week was the first anniversary of my stepfather’s sudden death. The deer had eaten everything we’d left on his grave, so I bought Shasta daisies, black-eyed Susans, Spanish lavender and golden oregano, carried […]
July 30, 2011
The Globe and Mail, May 9, 2009 Mothers and OthersBy: Sarah Blaffer HrdyPublisher: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 422 pages, $38.95 The time I had set aside to rewrite this review was spent at the clinic with my son, getting him antibiotics and a tetanus shot after a skateboard accident left sizable deposits of his skin on the neighbourhood […]
July 29, 2011
The Ministry of Special Cases By: Nathan Englander Publisher: Knopf, 339 pages, $32 Nathan Englander’s first book, a collection of stories titled For the Relief of Unbearable Urges—unusual both in concept and in quality—got big advances, excellent reviews, a place on bestseller lists and translations into a dozen languages. Englander, who grew up in an ultra-Orthodox community in New […]
July 28, 2011
The Vancouver Sun, November 1, 2003 Shake Hands with the Devil By: Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire Maj. Brent Beardsley Publisher: Random House Canada, 448 pages, $39.95 In July 2000, a man was found unconscious and drunk in a park in Hull, Que. People close to him feared he was suicidal. That man was Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian force […]
July 27, 2011
The Weekend Sun, September 13, 1997 Larry’s PartyBy: Carol ShieldsPublisher: Random House of Canada, 352 pages, $31 In 1995 Carol Shields gave the Bill Duthie Memorial Lecture at the Vancouver International Writers Festival, where she alluded to the failure of contemporary novelists, herself included, to write about happy marriages. With Larry’s Party, her latest novel, she still hasn’t tackled […]