Author Archives: John Sloan

April 2026. We were in Toronto overnight (otherwise not our favourite place to be) en route to upstate New York and were starving after our cross-Canada flight. We remembered this place from years ago when our daughter lived here and … Continue reading →

Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War: A History. Modern Library, New York, 2010. 3/26. I’ve just finished and reviewed a powerful disturbing novel involving the Korean War We Do Not Part. After reading that story I realized I had close to … Continue reading →

Kang, Han. We Do Not Part. Munhak Donghae, S Korea , 2021. English translation E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, Hogarth, London/New York 2025. F; 3/26. This is a powerful semi-historic novel by a Korean writer who received the Nobel … Continue reading →

Ives, Lucy. An Image of My Name Enters America. Grayolf, Minneapolis, 1924. NF; 3/26. These essays reveal for me another side of Ms. Ives. Her short story Cosmogeny was a favourite of mine although I wasn’t as excited about one … Continue reading →

Doerr, Anthony. Four Seasons in Rome. Scribner (Simon & Schuster) New York 2007. Memoir; 2/26. I enjoyed Doerr’s Pulitzer-winner All the Light We Cannot See and I was interested in this memoir because of having taken my family to Western … Continue reading →

Koenig, John. Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster New York 2021. ??;2/26 There are quite a few surprising things about this strange book. For sure an ordinary dictionary it isn’t – not alphabetical, not putatively exhaustive. My first surprise … Continue reading →

Shaw, Martin. Liturgies of the Wild. Sentinel (Penguin Random House), 2026. NF; 2/26. It’s rare that I start a book and don’t finish it, and even rarer that I review a book I haven’t finished. Like never. But that’s what … Continue reading →

Furst, Alan. Night Soldiers. Random House, New York 1988. F;12/25. I’ve said I have a bits-and-pieces acquaintance with history: one university course (Canadian history), any familiarity mostly from TV, spotty reading here and there. So with a historical novel like … Continue reading →

McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. Simon and Schuster New York 1985. F;12/25. This is a long and widely-admired tale of American cowboys in the late 1870s. But I’d say it would be a mistake to dismiss it as a standard “western”. … Continue reading →

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited. Chapman and Hall, London 1945. 12/25; F. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it. (DH Lawrence) Daniel Handler disagrees. He tells … Continue reading →