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All
dispatches
essays
reviews
columns
Norbert Ruebsaat
Then We Take Berlin

Stan Persky has been hailed as a great prose stylist. He has also been hailed as a possible pervert (the word wasn't used, but that was the implication) for his interest in young boys. Young men, rather. Male prostitutes. Both statements are true. Th

Lily Gontard
There Is a Season

There Is a Season (McClelland & Stewart), Patrick Lane’s meditative account of the year after he returned from rehab and the solace he found in his garden, is an honest telling of the past and present life of a husband, teacher, alcoholic, drug addic

Patty Osborne
The Year of Magical Thinking

On an evening in December 2003, Joan Didion's husband John sat down at the dinner table and talked to her while she tossed the salad. One minute he was talking and the next he wasn't, because he was slumped over in his chair, dead. Nine months later

Daniel Francis
The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine

...The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine (Douglas & Mclntyre/University of Washington Press), the first book-length study of the site. Along with a history of the shrine, Jonaitis presents a precise description of its contents, many photographs and several Firs

Jennesia Pedri
Then Came the Condos

Jennesia Pedri examines the literary legacy of Dollarton, once home to Earle Birney, Dorothy Livesay and Al Purdy, and the recently-evicted Carole Itter and Al Neil.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
The Whole, Gorey Story

Kelsea O'Connor on the comprehensive biography of Edward Gorey.

Mandelbrot
The World of William Notman

Few of us have heard of William Notman, the suggestively named inventor of Canadian photography, and possibly its greatest practitioner. Notman left England precipitately in 1856, to avoid imprisonment for fraud, and shipped out to Montreal.

Michael Hayward
The Winter Vault

Anne Michaels’s second novel, The Winter Vault, was published thirteen years after her debut, Fugitive Pieces. Was it worth the wait?

Patty Osborne
The Woman Who Loved Airports

The first thing that strikes you about The Woman Who Loved Airports (Press Gang) is what a good title it is; happily, the second thing is what a good book it is. The short stories by Marusya Bociurkiw, are mostly about lesbians, although some are abo

Carrie Villeneuve
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

Carrie Villeneuve reviews The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, a documentary on British Columbia's marijuana industry.

Patty Osborne
The Woman in the Yard

I was eager to read Stephen Miller’s The Woman in the Yard (Picador) because I had enjoyed Miller’s previous mystery novel, Wastefall. His publisher did not respond to my requests for a review copy, but fortunately Miller is a neighbour of mine and w

Lily Gontard
The Walking Boy

Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll seem a little boring when compared to Lydia Kwa’s concoction of sex, bisexuality, homosexuality, tortured spirits, innocence, desire, betrayal, greed and love in her second novel, The Walking Boy (Key Porter). Kwa deftly

Blaine Kyllo
The Weight of Water

I really want to love Kathryn Bigelow films. She’s a talented director and has never failed to take on challenging projects. She’s a talented director and has never failed to take on challenging projects. My problem with her directing is that she is

Trevor Wilson
The Wide World Dreaming

I’ve read The Wide World Dreaming by JoAnne Soper-Cook (Breakwater) twice now and I’m still surprised by how good it is. It’s written by a woman from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and published by a company there that needs to learn more about good layou

Michał Kozłowski
The Wigmaker

The Wigmaker, C.E. Coughlan’s new book (Smart Cookie Publishing, webspotter.com/smartcookie), is a collection of fourteen short stories, some of which have previously appeared in Geist and other literary magazines.

Daniel Francis
The Very Richness of That Past: Canada Through the Eyes of Foreign Writers

Greg Gatenby must be stopped. A couple of years ago he edited a collection of remarks about Canada by various foreign writers. Now he has followed up with a second thick collection, The Very Richness of That Past: Canada Through the Eyes of Foreign W

Geist Staff
The Wild is Always There

"Greg Gatenby is the Toronto impresario whose good works on behalf of Literature are legendary. Unhappily, his latest book is not one of them." A review of The Wild is Always There.

Geist Staff
The Way of a Boy

The Way of a Boy is Ernest Hillen's story about his life in a Japanese prison camp in Java during World War Two. Hillen was only a boy at the time—he spent ages seven to eleven in the camp—and instead of looking back from the vantage point of adultho

Patty Osborne
The Voice Imitator

A thin little book, The Voice Imitator (University of Chicago Press) by Thomas Bernhard, translated by Kenneth J. Northcott, made me laugh out loud in the dark as I sat propped up in bed, my reading light clipped to the back cover, while everyone els

Kris Rothstein
The Virgin Spy

Kris Rothstein reviews The Virgin Spy by Krista Bridges (Douglas & McIntyre).

Barry Kirsh
The Unconsoled

Mr. Ryder, the storyteller in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled (Knopf), speaks so sincerely, humbly and clearly in the first person that we hear his voice inside ourselves; this inspires trust.

Kris Rothstein
The Waterproof Bible

Kris Rothstein reviews The Waterproof Bible by Andy Kaufman (Random House).

Kevin Barefoot
The Utne Reader

The Utne Reader served us coffee aficionados a treat this month, by devoting the November/December issue to a study of the enigmatic bean. Of the nine pieces included in the "Coffee Madness" section, Mark Schapiro's "Muddy Waters" is the most enlight

Patty Osborne
The Underwood

Patty Osborne reviews The Underwood by P.G. Tarr, winner of a 3-Day Novel Contest.

Michelle Fost
Long Distance

Shared family memories of burnt baked goods.

Florence Grandview
Lights Out at the Jubilee

At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.

Rhonda Waterfall
Les Joyeux Lémuriens

“Thank Christ,” says Dieter when I finally wake up. “I thought you were dead.”

Matt Snell
Laying on Hands

In Peterborough, Pastor Billy cures arthritis, back pain, bone spurs, lymphoma, stage four liver cancer, sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation

Stephen Osborne
Last Steve Standing

Stephen Osborne says goodbye to Stephen Harper.

Margaret Nowaczyk
Knitting Class

During World War II my grandmother ran contraband, hunted pigeons.

Jeff Shucard
King Zog and the Secret Heart of Albania

The secret heart of Albania is imbued with compassion and a desire to help those in need

Véronique Darwin
K to 7

Veronique Darwin revisits her childhood journal, from hearing ghosts in kindergarten to staring at hotties in grade seven.

Stephen Osborne
Julia’s World

I went to the babysitter’s to pick up Julia, who was two and a half years old, and she said that she had been “a little bit sad for a while” because her mother, who had a new part-time job and had dropped Julia off a few hours earlier, had gone away for “quite a long time.”

CB Campbell
Joe and Me

Playing against the fastest chess player in the world.

Luke MacLean
Je M'Appelle Raphael

Possum-style or straight up dirty.

Sara Cassidy
Flying the Coop

You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.

Michał Kozłowski
Pleasant Artistic Experience

An intrepid Geist correspondent narrowly avoids being stabbed by a moose-antler letter opener in Whitehorse.

Michał Kozłowski
Pillars of Salt

"The tour guide said: every hour you spend down in the mine adds three minutes to your life." Michal Kozlowski reports from 300 feet below ground.

Joe Bongiorno
Piledrivin’ Patriots

On parle français icitte!

Marko Sijan
Peace on Earth

"My father believes the world is coming to an end, yet he commits his life to curing the sick." Dispatch by Marko Sijan.

Stephen Osborne
Pathfinder Deluxe

A young man comes into possession of a 1957 Pontiac, modelled after one owned by a legendary pianist.

Stephen Osborne
Other City, Big City

On the last day of October in Toronto a man in an art gallery said: “Showers should be coming in around 4 pm. They don’t always get it down to the hour like that.”

Robert Everett-Green
Ordinary Weekly Deaths

If Toronto were like Baghdad, thirty-nine res

Katharine O'Flynn
On the Track

I started walking, seriously. It was the bone scan that got me going. The healthy solid green was spongy with rotting black holes.

Henny-B
Nobody's Girl

The main reason that I open up my doors to people on the street is so that they would have a place to sort of come home.

Linda Solomon
Nobody’s Fault

In multi-cultural Vancouver, strangers come together at a moment of crisis.

Véronique Darwin
New Normal Board Games

Use the board games you unearthed during isolation to reinventclassic games for our times.

Jane Silcott
Natty Man

His look is self-concious, but well done.

Chelsea Novak
National Boyfriend

At a taping of George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Chelsea Novak meets Canada's boyfriend.

J. Jill Robinson
One Night at the Oceanview

Did that really happen?  J. Jill Robinson initiates a midnight stand-off between the police and two drunk brothers in an RV Park in White Rock, B.C.

Anik See
Fact
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

Rayya Liebich
Fact
Righthand Justified

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

JEROME STUEART
Fact
The Dead Viking My Birthmother Gave Me

“The first time I met him, he caused me to float to the ceiling"

Joseph Pearson
Fact
No Names

Sebastian and I enjoy making fun of le mythomane. We compare him to characters in novels. Maybe he can’t return home because he’s wanted for a crime.

Minelle Mahtani
Fact
Looking for a Place to Happen

What does it mean to love a band? A friend? A nation?

Christine Lai
Fact
Now Must Say Goodbye

The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,

the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown

Emily Lu
Fact
Love Song for Mosquito

Violence could not reach them only when they were distant as the moon, not of this world

Daniel Francis
Re-hanging the National Wallpaper

When I lived in Ottawa in the 1970s, I used to enjoy passing lazy afternoons at the National Gallery looking at the pictures. I remember how surprised I was when I first encountered the Group of Seven collection. These paintings were completely familiar—I’d seen them in schoolbooks and on calendars, posters, t-shirts, everywhere—yet at the same time they were completely unexpected.

Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café

It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.

Brad Cran
Fact
Leading Men

"Leading Men” is taken from a work-in-progress, Cinéma-Verité and the Collected Works of Ronald Reagan: A History of Propaganda in Motion Pictures.

Brad Cran
Fact
Empires of Film
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away

Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.

SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm

Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.

Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans

I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.

Kathleen Winter
BoYs

Derek Matthews has to be the ugliest boy in the class but I like him. I’ve liked every boy except Barry Pumphrey now. Barry Pumphrey likes me.

Norbert Ruebsaat
Media Studies

These stories and conversations took place in a Media and Communications Studies class at a Canadian college. Students come to the college from many countries, in the hope of enrolling eventually in a North American university.

BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late

"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."

CONNIE KUHNS
Last Day in Cheyenne

Remembering her father's last days in a hospital in Wyoming, Connie Kuhns struggles with questions of mortality, memory and how to fulfill her father's dying wish.

CONNIE KUHNS
Fifty Years in Review

A new anthology of reviews, interviews and commentary on Joni Mitchell's music reveals the star-making machinery.

MARY MEIGS
Off- and On-Camera

Out on the set, except for the fact that there is always someone to catch us if we stumble, or someone to set up folding chairs for us between scenes, we are beneficiaries of the semi that denies the passing of clock-time. There is nothing to remind

Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher

Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."

JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound

It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.

Daniel Francis
War of Independence

World War I, Canada’s “war of independence,” marked a turning point for a young colony wanting to prove itself as a self-reliant nation, but at what cost.

Michael Hayward
Delightful, etc.

Michael Hayward on Gathie Falk's memoir Apples, etc.

Patty Osborne
Detained at Customs

Another book that deals with the Little Sister's trial is a little chapbook called Detained at Customs (Lazara Press) which gives the full testimony of Jane Rule, an important witness for the prosecution. Rule shows us the impossibility of arriving a

Kris Rothstein
Decolonizing Canada

Review of "Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being" Amy Fung.

Thad McIlroy
Death and the Economist

The art of the obituary lives on: Obituaries of note from The Economist magazine, including those of the "gunrunner of CIA front companies" and "last interesting Marxist."

Geist Staff
Dead Certainties

Dead Certainties, by Simon Schama (Vintage), contains two "experiments in historical narrative" that should be on the reading list of anyone interested in how we imagine the past, and how the past is imagined for us. The first piece, "The Many Deaths

Stephen Osborne
Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War

Only now, eighty years after the war, are we given the explanation of that process of transformation, in the pages of Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War, by Jonathan F. Vance (UBC Press). Vance tells the story of a tiny country

Jesmine Cham
Dear Patient

A woman, hoping to find peace, seeks her birth mother. A review of By Blood by Ellen Ullman.

Patty Osborne
Death by Degrees

Soon after reading Moodie's Tale I ran across Death by Degrees (Doubleday), which features Wright's Inspector Charlie Salter, a middle-aged detective just as perplexed by the ironies of life as the rest of us. Death by Degrees takes place at a commun

Corrina Hodgson
Dead Girls

I finished Dead Girls (McClelland and Stewart) with a heavy feeling in my stomach. It’s not just that the stories are disturbing, it’s that I, the reader, have been made witness to this disturbance.

Patty Osborne
Dead White Males

David Dennings, the narrator of Ann Diamond’s new novel, Dead White Males (Livres DC Books), is a wacky hairdresser much like the one I visit every couple of months. But whereas my stylist is a filmmaker, Diamond’s is trying to be a hard-boiled priva

Holly Doyle
Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit

It’s a miracle that only two people die in Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit by Tom Osborne (Anvil Press), during a weekend in Vancouver when a hotel robbery goes terribly wrong and the thieves get tangled up with Grey Cup rabble-rousers and the backstag

Minna Schendlinger
Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries

Until I cracked open Terry Glavin's Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries (Greystone), I thought fish had no more significance to me than the wasabe and the soy sauce on the side. Now I know different.

Michael Hayward
Deactivated West 100

In Deactivated West 100 (Gaspereau Press), Don McKay continues to develop the poetics of place that he began with Vis à Vis (Gaspereau Press, 2001). In both books he tries “to think the relation between place and wilderness without going dizzy from a

Kris Rothstein
Darwin's Bastards

Kris Rothstein reviews Darwin's Bastards (Douglas & McIntyre).

Kris Rothstein
Day Shift Werewolf

Supernatural beings seem to have it easy: their purpose in life (or life after death) is clear and their mission to frighten or eat humans should be simple enough. But the creatures in Day Shift Werewolf (3-Day Books) suffer from the same self-doubt,

Michael Hayward
Dancing About Architecture

Review of "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell.

Michael Hayward
Cycling the Himalayas

Michael Hayward on the elation and freedom of long-distance cycling.

Sewid-Smith Daisy
Dancer in the Dark

While I was looking at a poster for Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, two women rushed up and begged me not to go in, crying "It's terrible, we couldn't sit through it!" I might have been swayed if a friend hadn't warned me that he almost left, ev

Derek Fairbridge
Da Capo Best Music Writing

The fourth volume in the Da Capo Best Music Writing pulls together some of the finest music writing published in 2003. It is rife with typos, but the articles are compulsively readable and they cover “rock, pop, jazz, country and more."

Helen Godolphin
Cruddy

Helen Godolphin reviews Lynda Barry's Cruddy, a novel deep within its own whacked-out world.

RICHARD VAN CAMP
Culturism

Mary Schendlinger reviews The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the riveting tale of “a Hmong child, her American doctors and the collision of two cultures.”

Patty Osborne
Crumb

My maternal nerve-ends were still vibrating from that article a few days later when I went to see Crumb, a film by Terry Zwigoff about the American comics artist Robert Crumb. The film is a shocking, riveting but not lurid meditation on what shapes a

Michael Turner
Crystallography

The two biggest trends in literature right now are spoken word and cybertext. The first is framed in a performance setting by wannabe rock stars, the second is played out on a computer by individuals dubbed cyber-punks.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Cut-Out Lit

Kelsea O'Connor reviews Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (Visual Editions).

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?

Liam Mcphail
Memories of Two Boyhoods

Review of "Memories Look at Me" by Tomas Tranströmer

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