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dispatches
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reviews
columns
Leah Rae
The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland

Leah Rae reviews The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland: "Finally, a comprehensive collection of fair-to-middlin’ verse for the multilingual."

Luanne Armstrong
The Education of Mr. Whippoorwill: A Country Boyhood

I love reading memoir and I love reading anything about farming and nature (I grew up on a farm), so I wanted to love The Education of Mr. Whippoorwill: A Country Boyhood by David Zieroth (Macfarlane Walter and Ross).

GILLIAN JEROME
The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Gillian Jerome reviews The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Europa).

Norbert Ruebsaat
The Emigrants

In “Ambros Adelwarth,” the third story in The Emigrants (New Directions), W. G. Sebald quotes long excerpts from the titular character’s purported diary, and this character’s diction and cadences duplicate Sebald’s so exactly that one feels uneasy w

Sewid-Smith Daisy
The Dreamlife of Bridges

The main characters of The Dreamlife of Bridges by Robert Strandquist (Anvil Press), also suffer through mental collapse and find themselves outside society on the west coast. Both Leo and June bottom out in the ways of their respective sexes: for Le

Patty Osborne
The English Stories

Patty Osborne reviews The English Stories by Cynthia Flood (Biblioasis).

Patty Osborne
The Demons of Aquilonia

Patty Osborne reviews The Demons of Aquilonia, a novel by Lina Medaglia.

Michael Hayward
The Discovery of France

Michael Hayward reviews Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, a scholarly but entertaining history of France’s emergence in the modern era.

Stephen Osborne
The Diana Chronicles

The death and life of Diana, Princess of Wales, provides Tina Brown, the well-known Diana tribute artist and lookalike—her Di-likeness fills the back cover of The Diana Chronicles (Doubleday), which makes it uncomfortable to read this book on public

Carra Noelle Simpson
The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq

Carra Noelle Simpson reviews The Deserters Tale by Joshua Key, an "honest, accessible, first-hand experience of the war in Iraq that is missing in mainstream media."

Kris Rothstein
The Diary of a Teenage Girl

In The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner (Frog Ltd/North Atlantic Books), Minnie Goetze shares her story of growing up in anything-goes 1970s San Francisco, using words, drawings and comics. It’s the year Minnie becomes sexually curious and

Michael Hayward
The Dam Busters

The Dam Busters (Anchor Bay dvd), Michael Anderson’s 1955 movie version of the attacks, is still considered a classic war movie, and despite special effects that look tame when compared to modern cgi sequences, the pacing of the film and the power of

Patty Osborne
The Dark Room

Several journeys go on in the three parts of The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert (Knopf). First we meet Helmut, a young man who doesn’t go far from Berlin but spends many hours on the platform of his local train station watching his city empty of people

Geist Staff
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

You'll need more than one cross-town bus ride to polish off The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (as abridged for Dell). But this book remains pre-eminently a great read, and it's rife with graceful periods and rolling paragraphs

Michael Hayward
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Michael Hayward reviews The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, directed by David Fincher (Criterion).

Norbert Ruebsaat
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power and in the film it is based on, turns notions about corporate responsibility and accountability into oxymorons.

Lara Jenny
The Complete Life of Harmon du Prés

Pocket Canon #4, The Complete Life of Harmon du Prés, is a masterpiece of meandering nostalgia. An unnamed narrator reminisces about youthful encounters with Harmon in sometimes baffling vignettes, constructing a mysterious tale that is anything but

Stephen Osborne
The Cult of Nature

Alexander Wilson, in his book The Cult of Nature (Between the Lines), makes the following remark in passing on page 25: By the late nineteenth century, almost half of North Americans lived in cities. It was not until then—the moment that in the Unite

Lily Gontard
The Cripple and His Talismans

The protagonist of The Cripple and His Talismans by Anosh Irani (Raincoast) is a self-centred, self-absorbed, wealthy-but-have-chosen-to-live-among-the-crippled-and-poor-in-Bombay man.

Daniel Francis
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals: The Lost History of Europe's Animal Trials

Receiving books for Christmas raises the question: What possible reason did anyone have to give me this? ... This year it was my uncle's turn: why exactly did he send me a copy of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals: The Lost H

Sam Macklin
The Complete Peanuts: Volume 1, 1950 to 1952

The Complete Peanuts: Volume 1, 1950 to 1952 by Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics) is the first in a series of deluxe hardback editions in which every single Peanuts comic strip will be reprinted, in order.

Leah Rae
The Cold Panes of Surfaces

In his book of poetry, The Cold Panes of Surfaces (Nightwood), Chris Banks takes the incidental moments of our lives and raises them, with stunningly precise language, to the level of the divine. In lines like these: “Today, field crickets with hum-b

Leah Rae
The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab

This edge-of-your-seat film follows a Spanish chef on his quest to win the prestigious cooking competition, the Bocuse D’Or. Review by Leah Rae.

Eve Corbel
The Comics Journal

Geist readers who take in the Globe and Mail will have seen a sobering feature not long ago reporting the jailing, flogging and even murdering of cartoonists who dare to satirize the governments of various countries, official religions, prominent cit

Evel Economakis
Leningrad Redact

“If we paid protection money to the KGB, there’d be nothing left for salaries. And we call it the FSB now.”

Stephen Osborne
Iceman

Last month I had lunch with a good friend who years ago had told me that her parents, who immigrated to Canada after the war, were Holocaust survivors. I asked my friend, whose name is Slava, to tell me again about her parents, who had lived in Vilna, the ancient Lituanian city of Europe known for three centuries as the “Jerusalem of the north.”

KATHRYN MOCKLER
I Won’t Clean the Tub

He said he just wanted towels. There was no reason to be afraid.

David Mitchell
Imaginary City

Crack addicts, art critics and pregnant waitresses populate David Mitchell's uncanny vision of Vancouver.

RICHARD VAN CAMP
In Memoriam: Edith Iglauer, 1917 - 2019

Respected journalist, Geist contributor and maker of olive sandwiches.

JILL MANDRAKE
Ice Cream Dude

Compassionate, good truck driver, likes kids, likes ice cream—the makings of a no-fail ice cream dude.

Jeff Shucard
Hurricane

Four days after Sandy, Shucard's parents are in good humour, very brave and very glad to see him—and unsure if he's taking them to Bolivia, Azerbaijan or Canada.

Jan Feduck
Hurricane Diary

Jan Feduck faces Frenchish food, vomit and guys from Ontario when her ferry from the Magdalen Islands is caught in a hurricane.

Stephen Osborne
Hospitals of the Mind

A few years ago, someone left a pocket-sized photo album on my desk with an unsigned note stuck on the cover that said I “might know what to do with it.” Inside, glued one to a page, are twenty-four photographs of Essondale, the mental hospital in N

Christine Novosel
Hived Off

Christine Novosel reports from Glasgow on art school, apiary management, Brexit and being a junkyard dog.

Lindsay Diehl
Honolulu

Lindsay Diehl encounters choppy waves, a beautiful man in a hot tub and a pendant shaped like a curved tongue on a trip to Hawaii.

Thad McIlroy
Hernia Heaven

Thad McIlroy spends the night in hospital to get a hernia—possibly on his left side, possibly on his right—repaired.

Thad McIlroy
Hernia Heaven, Part 2

Thad McIlroy undergoes a hernia operation—and with Neil Diamond and the right kind of drugs, it might only take ten minutes.

Susan Mockler
Hey, Sexy

"I glanced at Jack, his tattooed arms, his gloved hands resting on the wheels of his manual chair. If only I could get my arms back. I could live with anything else."

Jeff Shucard
Home Front

"My father began his shopping spree in the fashion department. He ordered jackets, sweaters, shirts, trousers and shoes. In his new wardrobe he looks like a mummy that has been dressed up for a big night of trick-or-treating."

Saeko Usukawa
Gulf Island Sojourn

"Campbell River, best fishing in the world. They do every­thing for you. All you have to do is bring yourself and decide what you're going to drink."

Marcus Youssef
Happy Shiny People

The Museum of Communism is easy to find thanks to the museum’s adver­tis­ing slo­gan: We’re above McDonald’s.

Stephen Osborne
Grinkus and Pepper

Stephen Osborne is entranced by a pair of eccentric, high profile students while on a university tour in 1964.

Andrea King
Great Historical Curiosity

The facts (and fictions) surrounding the tale of Quebec's most famous murderess, La Corriveau.

Stephen Osborne
Halloween Capital of America

This year for Halloween, we creep back into the archives and Stephen Osborne digs deep into his family's history at the Salem witch trials.

Eve Corbel
Guide to Literary Footwear

Espadrille, paduka, chopine—Eve Corbel illustrates a guide for readers on some of the fanciest footwear found in literature.

Jordyn Catalano
Goodbye and Good Luck

A COVID test in the city of a hundred steeples.

Sara Cassidy
Gravitass

A poetic tribute to men's rear-ends.

Katie Addleman
Greyhound

The driver said, “Are you fit to travel, sir?” and the crack smoker said, “Are any of us fit to travel?"

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden
Giller Filler

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden attends Between the Pages, the pre-Giller hybrid that’s a kind of sacrificial altar/beauty pageant for six Canadian authors.

Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary

After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.

DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps

On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.

Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life

Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.

Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers

It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.

MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal

The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.

Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor

A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.

Daniel Francis
The Artist as Coureur de Bois

Tom Thomson, godfather of the Group of Seven, drowned in an Ontario lake under mysterious circumstances, and ever since, his reputation has been the stuff of legend.

Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect

I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.

Stephen Smith
Rinkside Intellectual

Stephen Smith investigates the hockey lives of Barthes, Faulkner, Hemingway, which were marked by dismissal, befuddlement and scorn.

J. Jill Robinson
Hot Pulse

I am sorry I caused you pain. But I thought it was okay.

HOWARD WHITE
How We Imagine Ourselves

When Geist first approached me with the idea of speaking here, I made it known that of all the things I ever wanted to be when I grew up, being an after-dinner speaker was very low on the list.

Mia + Eric
Future Perfect

New bylaws for civic spaces.

Ann Diamond
How I (Finally) Met Leonard Cohen

On a rainy night in October 1970, I crossed paths with Canada's most elusive poet.

JILL MANDRAKE
Elementary

On the merry-go-round, you just shouted out a des­ti­na­tion and all the kids pushed until every­one agreed we’d arrived.

Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character

I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.

Annabel Lyon
Eye for Detail

What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.

Alberto Manguel
Cri de Coeur

Compared to today's vile heros, Ned Kelly-the Australian outlaw who wrote the angry, articulate Jerilderie letter in 1879-seems as innocent as an ogre-slaughtering hero of fairy tales.

Life in Language

For four decades, Jay Powell and Vickie Jensen helped to revive forgotten languages for many Aboriginal groups along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Read their story here.

M.A.C. Farrant
Notes on the Wedding

The mother of the groom measures the distance between two weddings: twenty-six years, six thousand miles, and a donkey covered with flowers. It’s outtasight.

Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?

Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.

CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies

"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."

Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski

He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?

DAVID COLLIER
The Last Grain Elevator in Regina

When you live in Saskatoon, you find yourself caring more about the details of grain farming then you did when you lived in Toronto or Windsor.

Stephen Osborne
The Great Game

The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.

Peggy Thompson
Fact
Opioids and Other Demons

Review of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

Kris Rothstein
Fact
An Ordinary Life?

Review of "There Was a Time for Everything" by Judith Friedland

Peggy Thompson
Fact
Grab Your Feather Boas

Review of "Stories from My Gay Grandparents" directed by J Stevens

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
The Quiet Hunt

Review of "Mushrooming: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt" by Diane Borsato

Cornelia Mars
Fact
Once Upon a Talking Goose

Review of "The Capital of Dreams" by Heather O'Neill

Anson Ching
Fact
Beach Reading

Review of "Slave Old Man" by Patrick Chamoiseau

Michael Hayward
Fact
Insecurity Blanket

Review of "The Age of Insecurity" by Astra Taylor

Kris Rothstein
Fact
Dogs and the Writing Life

Review of "And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life" by Helen Humphreys.

Peggy Thompson
Taken to a Place of Life

Review of "Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love" by Sarah Leavitt.

Shyla Seller
Fact
About the House

Review of "House Work" curated by Caitlin Jones and Shiloh Sukkau.

Patty Osborne
Fact
On a Train to Anywhere

Review of "M Train" by Patti Smith.

Kris Rothstein
Fact
An Ongoing Space of Encounter

Review of "On Community" by Casey Plett.

Jonathan Heggen
Fact
The Boy and the Self

Review of "The Boy and the Heron" directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

Michael Hayward
Fact
BELLE ÉPOQUE GOSSIP

Review of "The Man in the Red Coat" by Julian Barnes.

Michael Hayward
Fact
Conversations with the past

Review of "Conversations with Khahtsahlano, 1932–1954" reissued by Massy Books and Talonbooks.

Maryanna Gabriel
Fact
More Than one way to hang a man

Review of "Hangman: The True Story of Canada’s First Executioner" by Julie Burtinshaw.

Helen Godolphin
Fact
Pinball wizardry

Review of "Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game" written and directed by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg.

Peggy Thompson
Fact
Rollicking and honest: LIKE Me

Review of "Queers Like Me" by Michael V. Smith.

Meandricus
Fact
Wordy goodness

Review of "Rearrangements" by Natan Last, published in The New Yorker December 2023.

Michael Hayward
Fact
Circled By Wolves

Review of "Cabin Fever" by Anik See.

Cornelia Mars
Fact
On MOtherhood: Transforming Perceptions

Review of "Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood" by Lucy Jones.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
WEST COAST FORAGING

Review of "Edible and Medicinal Flora of the West Coast: British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest" by Collin Varner.

Anson Ching
Fact
A history of outport rivalry

Review of "The Adversary" by Michael Crummey.

Anson Ching
Fact
Fables Galore

Review of "Galore" by Michael Crummey.

Alberto Manguel
Role Models and Readers

Ruskin's readers have the power to know that there is indeed room for Alice at the Mad Hatter's table.

Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots

"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."

Alberto Manguel
Reading the Commedia

An appreciation of Dante's "Commedia."

Alberto Manguel
Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)

There is no way to step back from the orgy of kisses without offending.

Rob Kovitz
Question Period

Rob Kovitz compiles the pressing questions of the day—"How are they gonna beat ISIS?" And, "On Twitter, who cares?"

Stephen Henighan
Becoming French

For an English-speaking Canadian who has been exposed to French from an early age, Paris is the most disorienting city in Europe. It is grandiose, but it is mundane.

Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy

Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.

Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO

For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.

Daniel Francis
Afghanistan

One thing Canadians have learned from our armed incursion into Afghanistan is that we do not have a vocabulary for discussing war or warlike events.

Daniel Francis
African Gulag

The atrocities were carried out in the name of some version of “civilization” that the Queen represented.

Daniel Francis
Acts of Resistance

"Resistance to wars is as much a Canadian tradition as fighting them." Daniel Francis discusses alternative histories, anti-draft demonstrations and the divisive nature of war.

Alberto Manguel
A Novel for All Times

Alberto Manguel's column from Geist 93 about how the most important Turkish novelist of modern times took over fifty years to reach English-speaking audiences.

Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far

On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.

Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time

What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.

Alberto Manguel
A Brief History of Tags

A reflection on the complex and often inexplicable process of bibliographic categorizations.

Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror

What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.

Annabel Lyon
Ethical Juices

Parables, cautionary tales, morality plays, allegories—the notion that we can study literary works as texts of ethics is as old as literature.

Stephen Henighan
Ethnic Babies

Stephen Henighan discusses the crude first steps to finding a new way to talk about racial reality.

Daniel Francis
Come to the Cabaret

The Penthouse, the notorious Vancouver night club, shares a history with several of the city's missing women cases.

Stephen Henighan
Chariots of China

A bibliophile's worst nightmare: being stuck on a plane with a terrible book. A book mistaken for a work of serious history.

Stephen Henighan
Caribbean Enigma

Unravelling the mysteries of Alejo Carpentier

Daniel Francis
Canada's Funnyman

A misogynist, a racist and an academic walk into a bar...

Stephen Henighan
Campus Confidential

"In the public eye, universities have never recovered from the antics of Donald Sutherland as Professor Jennings in the 1978 film Animal House."

Alberto Manguel
Burning Mistry

Alberto Manguel examines a modern-day book burning and asks: how is this still happening?

Sadie McCarney
Christmas in Lothlórien

It was a gruesome war, Santa added in Papyrus font, but the forces of Good eventually emerged victorious

Peggy Thompson
Opioids and Other Demons

Review of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

Madeleine Pelletier
Dummies Raising Goats

Time to call a professional

Kris Rothstein
An Ordinary Life?

Review of "There Was a Time for Everything" by Judith Friedland

Peggy Thompson
Grab Your Feather Boas

Review of "Stories from My Gay Grandparents" directed by J Stevens

Anik See
The Crush and the Rush and the Roar

And a sort of current ran through you when you saw it, a visceral, uncontrollable response. A physical resistance to the silence

KELSEA O'CONNOR
The Quiet Hunt

Review of "Mushrooming: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt" by Diane Borsato

Cornelia Mars
Once Upon a Talking Goose

Review of "The Capital of Dreams" by Heather O'Neill

Rose Divecha
Clearing Out My Mother's House

The large supply of nine-volt batteries suddenly made sense

Michael Hayward
Insecurity Blanket

Review of "The Age of Insecurity" by Astra Taylor

Anson Ching
Beach Reading

Review of "Slave Old Man" by Patrick Chamoiseau

S.I. Hassan
Becoming Canadian

I traffic deep time in a great storm, guilty of ignorance and omission

Peggy Thompson
Taken to a Place of Life

Review of "Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love" by Sarah Leavitt.

Shyla Seller
About the House

Review of "House Work" curated by Caitlin Jones and Shiloh Sukkau.

Patty Osborne
On a Train to Anywhere

Review of "M Train" by Patti Smith.

Rayya Liebich
Righthand Justified

Language built on sounds of delight, coloured in the gardens of Beirut

Kris Rothstein
An Ongoing Space of Encounter

Review of "On Community" by Casey Plett.

Jonathan Heggen
The Boy and the Self

Review of "The Boy and the Heron" directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

Hollie Adams
A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths

In search of a big picture at the end of the singular world

Michael Hayward
Conversations with the past

Review of "Conversations with Khahtsahlano, 1932–1954" reissued by Massy Books and Talonbooks.

Maryanna Gabriel
More Than one way to hang a man

Review of "Hangman: The True Story of Canada’s First Executioner" by Julie Burtinshaw.

Peggy Thompson
Rollicking and honest: LIKE Me

Review of "Queers Like Me" by Michael V. Smith.

Helen Godolphin
Pinball wizardry

Review of "Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game" written and directed by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg.

Kathy Page
The Exquisite Cyclops

A writer roams her sleepscape in search of the extraordinary subconscious

Meandricus
Wordy goodness

Review of "Rearrangements" by Natan Last, published in The New Yorker December 2023.