Blog Reviewed by Kathleen Keenan
Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild is the moving, surprisingly engrossing account of her 1,100-mile solo hiking trip along the Pacific Crest Trail. After the death of her mother and a devastating divorce, then-22-year-old Strayed decides on a whim to hike the Trail after finding a guidebook in an outdoor store.
From inauspicious beginnings in a dusty California parking lot, struggling with her overloaded pack, Strayed makes her way up to Oregon by hiking, camping, and occasionally hitchhiking. She encounters and often depends upon the kindness of complete strangers along the way, but the memoir is ultimately the story of how she comes to terms with her mother’s death, forgives herself for her mistakes—including those that led to her divorce—and figures out what kind of life she wants to have back in civilization.
A goat and a moose are working together this May, as Toronto theatre company One Little Goat presents the English-language world premiere of the play The Charge of the Expormidable Moose, by Quebec poet-playwright Claude Gauvreau. Widely considered to be Gauvreau’s masterpiece, the playful and provocative play (whose original French title is La charge de l’orignal épormyable) revolves around a poet who is mocked and envied by his fellow housemates — or are they fellow inmates?
The Best Place on Earth, Ayelet Tsabari’s debut collection of short stories, brings readers directly into the messy, human heart of life in Israel. Tsabari — an Israeli of Yemeni descent now living in Canada — tackles a wide number of issues, from the different social stratas of Tel Aviv to living in a country that is constantly at war, to the varied ways that Israelis of different ages, origins, and genders learn to deal with the daily realities of violence, segregation, and death.
Following a style similar to his previous three successful novels (All My Friends Are Superheroes, The Waterproof Bible, and The Tiny Wife), Toronto-based author Andrew Kaufman’s latest offering, Born Weird, is an upbeat, quirky work of magic realism. If you’re willing to be taken on a trip where some things fall just outside the realm of possibility, you will be delighted by this (mostly) uplifting read about a scattered family finding a way to be together again.
Please wait...
