Articles

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on March 1, 2024 The Invisible Hotel, by Yeji Y. Ham Toronto: Bond Street Books, 2024. $34.00 / 9780385698054 If you’ve never heard of Yeji Y. Ham, that’s about to change in a hurry. This young Korean Canadian writer, a UBC Creative Writing grad and Brown University MFA who divides her time between Vancouver and Seoul, has written a first novel that—on its own merits, and with ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on February 12, 2024 The Longest Shot: How Larry Kwong Changed the Face of Hockey, by Chad Soon and George Chiang, with illustrations by Amy Qi Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, February 13, 2024  $24.95 / 9781459835030 The story of Vernon’s Larry Kwong, the first professional hockey player of Asian descent to crack an NHL line-up, has been told many times. The Province’s Tom Hawthorn, CBC reports, ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on February 5, 2024 Races: The Trials & Triumphs of Canada’s Fastest Family, by Valerie Jerome Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2023. $24.95 / 9781773102900 Last fall was the season of the sprinter for the sports memoir in Canada. In addition to the Ontario stories of Andre De Grasse (Ignite: Unlock the Hidden Potential Within) and Donovan Bailey (Undisputed: A Champion’s Life), there was a profoundly affecting B.C ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on January 25, 2024 Zulaikha, by Niloufar-Lily Soltani Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2023  $24.95 / 9781771339568 For readers with little more than news cycle awareness of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vancouver’s Niloufar-Lily Soltani offers an intriguing glimpse into a country whose people have endured no end of suffering from the dark legacies of colonial rule and religious extremism. The title character accounts for much of this ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on October 30, 2023. Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past, by Brett Popplewell Toronto: Harper Collins, 2023, $25.99 / 9781443457859 British Columbia has long been a magnet for eccentric new settlers with mysterious backgrounds who come here seeking to reinvent themselves. Thanks to an investigative journalist from Ontario, we now have another whose fascinating back story has been captured for ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on September 10, 2023
New Millennium Boyz
By Alex Kazemi New York: Permuted Press, 2023
$37 / 9781637583913 In some ways, Brad Seela is a typical seventeen-year-old white boy coasting through an apathetic life in the suburban North America of 1999: bored with school, indifferent about the future, disillusioned with his yuppie parents, susceptible to peer pressure, vulnerable to excessive drug use, and constantly horny ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on August 27, 2023 Almost Brown: A Mixed Race Family Memoir
by Charlotte Gill Toronto: Penguin RandomHouse, 2023
$36 hardcover / 9780735243033
The author of various fiction and narrative non-fiction titles, including the tree-planting memoir Eating Dirt, Sunshine Coast-based Charlotte Gill is a gifted storyteller. Her new memoir explores how the author’s self-image and sense of the world were shaped her family’s experience of ...

Book review essay by Daniel Gawthrop posted on British Columbia Review on June 21, 2023 Trickster Trilogy
by Eden Robinson Son of a Trickster
Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2017.
$21.00 / 9780345810793 Trickster Drift
Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2018.
$21.00 / 9780735273443 Return of the Trickster
Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2021.
$21.00 / 9780735273474 * I’ve never been a big fan of magical realism in fiction. While I get what it’s trying to achieve and recognize when it ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on February 15, 2023. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), 2022
$24.95 / 9780771047244 * Over the past six decades, as the People’s Republic of China has turned its brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet into the permanent subjugation of an entire population, generations of Tibetans have experienced profound upheaval and loss from ...

Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on January 14, 2023 Random Walks: New West from the Street
by Alan Haig-Brown White Rock: Image West Productions, 2022
$36.95 / 9780994817525 When I first saw this book available for review, I snapped it up right away. I love going for walks in New Westminster, where I live, and was eager to compare notes with another resident’s experience of the city by foot. Making ...