Tag: home

October 3, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 48: A Discussion of the Work of Max Turner

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I interrogate the work of Max Turner, an author who explores the notion of the psychiatric institution through the perspective of a vampire. Turner sets his vampiric character in a former psychiatric institution in Peterborough Ontario called the Nicholls’ Ward. In this discussion of Max Turner’s work, I explore ideas of...

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May 18, 2015

UNsettling Homelife

A review of They Have to Take You In edited by Ursula Pflug (Hidden Brook Press, 2014). By Derek Newman-Stille Home is a complicated concept, but one that we often pretend is easy. We project “home” as a place of belonging, of comfort, of ownership, and an extended form of selfhood, and we connect ideas to home like family, security,...

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February 8, 2015

Dreamy Horror

A Review of Emily Carroll’s “Through The Woods” (Margaret K. McElderry Books, Toronto). By Derek Newman-Stille “Through the Woods” is a modern day Grimm’s collection of horror tales, and it is wonderfully grim. Beautifully illustrated in an iconic fairy tale style, Through the Woods creates a sense of discomfort about the environments that we generally consider safe. From tales of...

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September 13, 2014

Adrift

A review of A.M. Dellamonica’s Child of a Hidden Sea (TOR, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Home is a complicated, multi-faceted, problematic notion, and A.M. Dellamonica captures this complexity in Child of a Hidden Sea. She begins her novel seemingly mid narrative, with her protagonist floating in the sea, facilitating the sense of dislocation for the reader that would shape Sophie’s...

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August 12, 2014

Sharing Darkness

A review of Marie Bilodeau’s Destiny’s Blood (Dragon Moon Press, 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille The motivation to find home, to create a sense of belonging shapes much of our experiences. We are tied to ideas of family, place, and community. Marie Bilodeau’s Destiny’s Blood is an exploration of home from the perspective of loss, need, warring desires, and conflict. Even...

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July 7, 2014

Home is a Place Created in Tales

A review of Amal El-Mohtar’s Mon pays c’est l’hiver (Lackington’s issue one, Winter, 2014 http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/mon-pays-cest-lhiver/ ) By Derek Newman-Stille We pretend that home is an easy concept, something that comes easily, but Amal El-Mohtar’s Mon pays c’est l’hiver poetically charts the challenge of home. We hold on to memories of a wintery, beautiful landscape. But our sense of place always...

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May 21, 2014

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 4: An Interview with Kate Story

Local Peterborough author and native Newfoundlander Kate Story was able to visit Speculating Canada on Trent Radio to talk about Newfoundland’s fairy tale tradition and how she incorporated it into her novel Blasted as well as exploring her own experiences as a Newfoundlander growing up surrounded by these tales and traditions. In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio,...

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May 11, 2014

Slippery Landscapes

A review of Kate Storey’s Blasted (Killick Press, 2008). By Derek Newman-Stille Steeped in the rich fairy lore of Newfoundland and a sense of longing for home, Kate Story’s Blasted is a novel about dislocation. Story’s stream of consciousness style of writing beautifully enhances the sense of temporal and special dislocation represented by movement through and slippage into fairy realms....

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January 19, 2014

Graphic Noir

A review of Drew Hayden Taylor, Alison Kooistra, and Michael Wyatt’s The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel (Annick Press, 2013, Toronto) By Derek Newman-Stille I have been finding comics unsatisfying in recent years because too many of them have been cutting down on dialogue. I tend to like a lot of dialogue and narrative movement in a graphic novel, so...

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August 17, 2013

Haunted by Nostalgia

A review of Lydia Peever’s “Everyday” (in Pray Lied Eve, Hora Morior Productions, 2013). By Derek Newman-Stille Our houses are places where we are supposed to be safe, places of comfort and security… but what happens when that space is disrupted? Houses can become estranged fast when we are alone, and when changes happen to our dwellings that we know...

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