Rave Reviews for Biblioasis Titles!

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IN THE NEWS!

THINGS ARE AGAINST US

Things Are Against UsLucy Ellmann’s Things Are Against Us (September 24, 2021) received another rave review in The Guardian! The previous one was in the Sunday Observer. This Guardian review was published online and in their print issue on July 3, 2021. You can read it on their website here.

Reviewer Catherine Taylor wrote:

“Ellmann’s polemic is a medley: a wickedly funny, rousing, depressing, caps-driven work of linguistic gymnastics hellbent on upbraiding the deleterious forces of the prevailing misogyny … Attentively negotiating a bleak world, the sentences remain joyous constructions … ‘Let it blaze!’ commands Woolf in Three Guineas. At their brightest, Ellmann’s own pyrotechnics are ones to savour.”

Things Are Against Us was also featured on the Lonesome Reader blog! The review was posted online on July 6, 2021, and can be read on their website here.

Reviewer Eric Karl Anderson wrote:

“This collection largely succeeds in distilling the author’s frustration about how we deserve better than the leaders we must live under and the systems we must live within. Ellmann wearily acknowledges towards the end of the book that “I recognize I’m fighting a losing battle—going up the down escalator” but I’m so glad she continues to march on and doesn’t allow herself to be silenced.”

Preorder Things Are Against Us today from Biblioasis here!

 

A Ghost in the Throat cover

A GHOST IN THE THROAT

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat received a rave review in the Globe & Mail! The article was published on July 2, 2021. You can read it on their website here.

Reviewer Emily Donaldson wrote:

“Electrifying and genre-bending … The book’s title conveys the uncanny feeling Ní Ghríofa had while writing the book, of having another’s voice emanate from her own throat … Ní Ghríofa’s quest sometimes feels like DNA-sleuthing, but with earth and texts taking the place of cheek swabs … The final act of reciprocity may be that one great work has ultimately spawned another. Ní Ghríofa’s book wouldn’t exist without Ní Chonaill’s poem, in the same way the poem wouldn’t exist without the death of Art O’Leary: both are rooted in agonizing, exquisite emotion.”

Buy your copy of A Ghost in the Throat from Biblioasis here!

And don’t miss out on our limited-edition signed hardcover copy here!

 

MURDER ON THE INSIDE

Murder on the Inside coverCatherine Fogarty’s Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary received a rave review in the Literary Review of Canada! The article “Inside Kingston Pen: So irksome and so terrible” was published online last week and will appear in the July/August 2021 issue. You can read it on their website here.

Reviewer Murray Campbell wrote:

“In Murder on the Inside, the writer and television producer Catherine Fogarty relates this notable chapter in Canadian history crisply and in greater detail than the various feature articles written over the years or even Roger Caron’s first-hand account of the event, Bingo!, from 1985. Remarkably, Fogarty gives distinct personalities to the inmates and puts us on the inside of the negotiations that ensued … Murder on the Inside tells a story that Canadians ought to know. Fogarty’s final chapter brings that story up to date and shows that we have not fully learned the lessons of 1971 … The ghosts who haunted those cold, dank corridors are still with us.”

Learn more about Murder on the Inside here!

 

THE DEBT

Andreae Callanan’s The Debt received a great review in the Toronto Star! The review was published online on July 1, 2021 and appeared in the Saturday, July 3 print issue. You can read it on their website here.

Reviewer Barb Carey wrote:

“Andreae Callanan’s appealing debut collection is an exploration of what is owed: an individual’s debt to family, community and place in forming identity and the present’s debt to the past. In the opening poem, the St. John’s writer offers a lyrical portrait of the island she calls home … In a sardonic suite of poems called ‘Crown,’ she looks at the history of settlement and colonialism, and the effect of being ‘outpost, not empire.’ Callanan’s phrasing is crisp, forthright and imbued with the music in commonplace language.”

The Debt was also featured in an article from the Peterborough Examiner! The article was published on July 1, 2021. You can read it on their website here.

Get your copy of The Debt from Biblioasis here!

 

WHITE SHADOW

White Shadow coverRoy Jacobsen’s White Shadow also received a great review in the Toronto Star! The review was published on July 8, 2021, and it appeared in the print issue on Saturday, July 10, 2021. You can read the review on their website here.

Reviewer Janet Somerville wrote:

“White Shadow is written in spare, affecting, unsentimental, vivid prose … Kind gestures translate perfectly in this ‘land of silence,’ where Barrøyers are ‘folk of few words’ with ‘great wisdom in hands and feet.’ A minimalist tale of tenacity, White Shadow is atmospheric and compelling.”

Pick up a copy of White Shadow from Biblioasis here!

News and Reviews: Highlighting Biblioasis Titles!

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IN THE NEWS!

THINGS ARE AGAINST US

Things Are Against UsLucy Ellmann’s Things Are Against Us (September 28, 2021) received a rave review in The Observer! The review was published in their print issue on June 27, and online on June 28. You can read it on their website here.

Reviewer Hephzibah Anderson wrote:

“Funny and furious … Aimed at everything from air travel to zips, genre writing to men (above all, men), her ire is matched only by an irrepressible comic impulse, from which bubbles forth kitsch puns, wisecracking whimsy and one-liners both bawdy and venomous … You don’t have to agree with everything Ellmann says to find this supple, provocative volume invigorating. Indeed, part of its craftiness lies in keeping the reader guessing about precisely how seriously she takes herself … A manifesto worth getting behind. On second thoughts, better make it a womanifesto.”

Preorder your copy from Biblioasis here!

 

Dante's Indiana coverDANTE’S INDIANA

Randy Boyagoda’s Dante’s Indiana (September 7, 2021) received a positive review from Kirkus Reviews! The review was published online on June 29, 2021, and it will appear in their July 15, 2021 print issue. You can read it on their website here.

Kirkus wrote,

“Boyagoda keeps things moving quickly and imaginatively. He skewers hosts of sinners along the way, but the wit has a winsome empathy behind it. A rollicking, inventive, mostly successful satire—with a vein of seriousness and sadness underneath.”

Preorder your copy today from Biblioasis here!

 

100 MILES OF BASEBALL

Dale Jacobs & Heidi LM Jacobs were interviewed by Steve Paikin on TVO’s The Agenda about their new book 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer! The interview aired on June 15, 2021, and you can watch it on their website here.

On June 16, 2021, CBC Books included 100 Miles of Baseball in their list “24 Canadian books to get your dad for Father’s Day”.  You can check out the list on their website here.

Also, Dale Jacobs & Heidi LM Jacobs were interviewed by the Pandemic Baseball Bookclub. Heidi & Dale were joined in conversation by Andrew Forbes, author of The Only Way is the Steady Way. The interview was posted on June 16, 2021. You can watch it on their YouTube channel here.

Andrew Forbes wrote,

“In 100 Miles of Baseball, authors Heidi L.M. Jacobs and Dale Jacobs create a series of beautiful, heartfelt and carefully considered meditations on baseball’s myriad pleasures and meanings.”

Buy 100 Miles of Baseball from Biblioasis here!

 

DRIVEN

The Coast published an excerpt from Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers highlighting Halifax driver, Michael Kamara’s story on June 16, 2021. The excerpt was published in the print issue and is available on their website here. 

Editor Morgan Mullin wrote,

“When you’re in a cab, looking at the back of the driver’s head, do you think about who they are? Not just their job—to get you from Point A to Point B—but their life and dreams? Probably not, the same way you don’t think about what your cashier had for breakfast. But Marcello Di Cintio does think of these things—enough that he wrote a book about cabbies, built on endless hours of interviews that construct the backstory of drivers from across the country.”

On June 18, 2021, the CBC’s Day 6 included Marcello Di Cintio’s Driven on their summer reading list! Book columnist Becky Toyne discussed Driven on the show, featuring it as one of the four titles she recommends. You can listen to the segment here.

Also on June 18, 2021, the Montreal Gazette included Driven in their list of “Time to revive an old habit: seven books to take out and about this summer”.  You can check out the list on their website here.

Reviewer Ian McGillis wrote,

“In Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers, Marcello Di Cintio takes the time and trouble to engage with a cross-Canada range of people representing a profession too often taken for granted. Most of them are immigrants; all of them are subject to scarcely conceivable challenges and obstacles, often exacerbated by the onset of Uber.”

Marcello Di Cintio’s Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers received a positive review in the Winnipeg Free Press! The review was published on June 26, 2021. You can read the review on their website here. 

Reviewer Gordon Arnold wrote:

“Driven is a collection of short essays laying out the backstory for an eclectic array of immigrant cabbies … All of the characters are driven by an incredible work ethic, where 17-hour days are not uncommon … If you have spent any time at all in cabs, chances are you will have met some of the character types in this easy-reading collection.”

Marcello Di Cintio was also interviewed on the video & audio podcast Sweater Weather. Marcello spoke to writer Aaron Giovannone, and the episode aired on June 26, 2021. You can watch it on the YouTube channel here. 

Marcello Di Cintio was interviewed on another podcast, Canada Reads American Style. He was interviewed by the two hosts, Rebecca Higgerson and Shauna Quick, and the episode aired on June 28, 2021. You can listen to the episode here. 

Order your copy of Driven here!

 

LUCIA

The Globe & Mail included Alex Pheby’s Lucia (June 15, 2021) in the Summer 2021 Books Preview! The list was published online on Friday, June 18, 2021, and was also in their print issue on the weekend. You can read it on their website here.

Reviewer Emily Donaldson praised Lucia:

“An air of mystery has always clung to Lucia Joyce—daughter of writer James, dancer and lover of, among others, Samuel Beckett and Alexander Calder … In an original, bravura turn, British novelist Alex Pheby tells Lucia’s story from the perspective of the various men around her (spoiler alert: none come off well).”

Buy Lucia today from Biblioasis here!

 

A GHOST IN THE THROAT

A Ghost in the Throat coverDoireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (June 1, 2021) received a rave review from the Chicago Review of Books! The review was published on June 25, 2021. You can read it on their website here. 

Reviewer Shazia Hafiz Ramji wrote:

“A detailed tapestry that threads Eibhlín Dubh’s family histories with the author’s own translations of her poem from the Irish, Ní Ghríofa’s essayistic and intimate style recalls the inter-disciplinary perambulations of W.G. Sebald and the uncompromising feminism of Maggie Nelson … A Ghost in the Throat is a kaleidoscopic book of ‘homemaking’ that centers the intuitive knowledge of the body in order to learn to live—again, again, and again.

Also, A Ghost in the Throat was included by Buzzfeed Books as one of “58 Great Books to Read This Summer, Recommended by Our Favourite Indie Booksellers”! The listed was posted on June 24, 2021. Check it out here. 

James Crossley at Madison Books wrote:

“Many writers have used classic literary works as a lens for examining their own lives, but none have ever given me the visceral thrill that Doireann Ní Ghríofa has. She doesn’t meditate on a mysterious 18th-century Irish lament; she wrestles with it, turning it over and over to reveal myriad intimate connections to modern motherhood and marriage. To read A Ghost in the Throat is to hold in your hands a living, beating heart.”

Finally, A Ghost in the Throat was listed by Page One as a New & Noteworthy title in their July/August 2021 issue.  It will be available in print, and you can check out the list on their website here.

Get your copy of A Ghost in the Throat from Biblioasis here!