David Yoon

Evan's father dies at his desk amidst shelves filled with ships in bottles and a yellowed, leather bound book cradling his head. It's a memoir of a WWII Japanese soldier stranded on a heart shaped island he names Kokoro-Jima. It is inhabited with ghost children that quietly follow him around the island. It also holds cadaverous jikininki or hungry ghosts that feed on the memories of the dead.

But what does that have to do with Evan's father, or his gruff estranged grandfather who has flown down to help settle affairs. It's Lost with a YA bent.

It's 1940s Manhattan and psychiatrist David Manne is called out by the police to diagnosis a violent husband and subsequently has the suspect, Mr Esterhazy, committed. It doesn't sit well with Manne who finds himself checking Esterhazy, who maintains his name is Smith, out of the institute he's been sent to and bringing him into his home. After a series of tumultuous events Manne finds himself living as Smith - or maybe he was Smith all along?

Clues and echoes reverberate as we dive into this möbius strip of a book. It's a credit to Wilcken that he manages to maintain the conceit throughout the book. It's an incredulous plot that should strain believability but on the page it turns into an engrossing puzzle that leaves the heavy lifting to the reader. Pay attention.

It's all beautiful bits of writing. Each chapter a finely wrought gem. There's a beautiful chapter on a failed marriage, a forgotten bottle of champagne, scribbling a script at stop lights and a car dying in the snow with her son in the back. The pages are filled with cyphers and symbols. As a whole it just doesn't feel like it's moving anywhere. Titling it Alligator and opening with the image of the alligator farmhand left me holding onto that thread for most of the book waiting for the payoff. It never really comes.

Really it's a tiny death to preface a review with “it's not terrible”. How can you not be wary of a book that embarks on a quest to be happier at home? It could have easily been a tired sort of humble brag novella like Eat, Pray, Love so I'm grateful for small ideas presented as small ideas. Nothing earth shattering, but it's ok to point out the little things, that in hindsight are painfully obvious, that can make people happier.

It just felt a bit formulaic to help the medicine go down. Reveal small idea like “go on adventures”. Back with several pithy quotes from appropriate authors and poets. Insert coincidental conversation with friend/party guest/hairdresser that teases out opposing viewpoints. Admit to fumbling but making progress and finish with a “just be you” pat on the head.

Nothing wrong with that but I'd no sooner closed the book than I had completely forgotten everything within.

It's a gem of a book that can still manages to break my heart.

The tavern at Faial Island is just a wonderful bit of writing. Cakes, wine, smoking cheroots and a mandolin girl. On the Lysander and the rending of the great whale is all blood, viscera and industry. It's a rollicking and sure voice.

Then the book slides into the bleak second half. It's a deft hand that can render the slow creep into madness and desperate survival that brings the remaining crew of the Lysander back to England. Every deprivation, each brief respite and the eventual catalog of death is beautifully revealed. Maybe it's the thankful inclusion of retrospective that promises Jaffy's survival that makes the going bearable.

I'm just not sure of the denouement. It's seems adrift. A small complaint.

A nice twist on the usual sword and sorcery fantasy trope. This time Middle Earth makes way for ancient China. Instead of orcs, elves and trolls we get mandarins, bonzes and ginseng.

Li Kao is an ancient scholar with “a slight flaw in his character” accompanied by Number Ten Ox, his “esteemed former client and current assistant”.

From there it's a caper meets Sherlock Holmes with a supernatural thriller bent and a bit of Hope and Crosby roadtrip thrown in for good measure.

Bridge of Birds gets a solid 4 stars but I continued on with The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen included in the omnibus edition. Halfway through I was at the unfortunate point where you find yourself reading just to finish.

This isn't some sappy, self-help book filled with banal platitudes and new age mantras. Considering that author Ray Robertson suffers from near crippling OCD and barely weathered a near suicidal depression he's not one to espouse ideas like “to thine own self be true”. Then again fellow writer (and, perhaps in tasteless understatement, one who didn't fare as well against his depression) David Foster Wallace would go on to say that “in the day -to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.”

Instead Ray explores 15 ideas that make life worth living. The usual suspects like Love, Art, Humor, Home and Intoxication backed up by a hefty dose of quotes from literary luminaries. It reminded me of a lot of my old English days reading Northrop Frye and bouncing all over the literary canon. Here Robertson isn't just namedropping Thoreau, Camus and Flaubert but considering the War in Iraq, watching Bob Dylan hork and growing up in Chatham Ontario loving KISS.

Maria Popova from the blog Brain Pickings calls it the reinvention of the secular sermon. The title is taken from the final exhortation of David Foster Wallace's speech to Kenyon College, included within, that is often referred to as “This is Water” That, along with the beautiful design of the book, is worth the price of admission. I'm just sad it doesn't have my second favourite commencement address. It's George Saunders address to Syracuse University in 2013 on the power of kindness.

Accused of something, others must consider the possibility that you are guilty and hold that idea in their thoughts. It could be as simple as a wallet stolen from a gym locker or as grim as vague accusations of abuse. Innocent until proven guilty, but accusations carry immense weight.

The book is filled with ambiguity. Our narrator is having an affair with a married man, his wife battling cancer - does that color our perception of her? The whistleblower that uncovers a paedophila ring is an entirely unlikeable person. The accusers have motive to play up their accusations and the accused seems motivated by entirely altruistic ideals.

Lots of ideas here rendered subtly but I found my focus wandering with the narrative.

A story written by a then 24 year old Choi In-Hun follows our philosophy student protagonist Lee Myong-jun torn between North and South Korea. Lee is exactly the sort of introspective, narcissist 20-something philosophy student you'd expect, wrestling with his righteous indignation and somewhat misogynistic tendencies. He wears his overly earnest heart on his sleeve and is frankly a mess. Disillusioned by the corruption of the South he escapes to the North but instead of finding the excitement of revolution discovers a flattened, ash-grey world. In the end he chooses to escape to a third place, a neutral county.

The book reminded me of my uncle who wrestled with the same demons and disappeared one day. Given up for dead it was only 40 years later that my mother learned he had left for North Korea. His name appeared in the national paper as part of reunification efforts and my mother went to meet him in North Korea. Unlike Lee, he wasn't afforded the option of a third, neutral path and eked out a meager living as a university professor in the North. Living well by North Korean standards he was still emaciated, with crooked yellowed teeth in a borrowed suit confiding in my mother that all the gifts being handed over as a result of tearful reunions would never be seen by their intended recipients.

Gastropod (awesome podcast) explored Denomination of Origin (DO) for mezcal and tequila in their episode Mescal: Everything but the Worm.

The DO ties things like Champagne and Roquefort cheese to a specific area and enforces specific methods unique to the product. Tequila was the first successful DO outside of Europe in 1974 and secured tequila as a uniquely Mexican product in the face of Spain and South Africa marketing drinks as tequila prior to the designation.

In terms of market growth and the explosion of premium tequila brands the DO has been a huge success. In terms of environmental sustainability, preservation of cultural traditions, fair wages and working conditions for rural workers, the DO hasn't done much at all.

The DO favours practices that align with growth and the industrialization of tequila. It allows for the adulteration of tequila up to 49%, the use of autoclaves and diffusers. What was once made from over a dozen different agave plants, the DO now limits it to blue agave creating an especially susceptible to disease monoculture. These are the mistakes that mescal is trying to avoid.

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I'm a fan of tequila. Not exactly an easy proposition here in Ontario where it's downright disheartening to see what actually makes it across our borders. This was an immensely readable dissertation and has left me wanting to explore mezcal now too. Unfortunately here in Ontario the availability of mezcal makes tequila seem like an embarrassment of riches.

The story is like a set of Matrushka dolls moving further and further away from the author. Wirkus introduces us to a college acquaintance Danny Laszlo who talks of translating the obscure works of Brazilian science fiction writer Eduard Salgado-MacKenzie and the long journey to uncover his rumoured manuscript called The Infinite Future which is the story of a lesbian, galactic nun recounting the life of Irena Sertorian who was a character featured in Salgado-MacKenzie's work. You get all that?

They're all of them interpreters. We the reader are interpreting the text of course but each level reveals another sort of interpretation. Whether it's Laszlo working as a translator teasing out Salgado-MacKenzie's intent not to mention the interpretation of Salgdao-MacKenzie himself (just read the book). There's also the story of fellow Salgado-MacKenzie fan Harriet Kimball and her interpretation of Mormon text vs that of a more conservative Craig Ahlgren. Translator Laszlo also wrestles with his relationship to the Mormon faith - and I find that I don't think I've ever read anything that presents Mormons as reasonable characters of faith before.

But even that gets muddied when we are presented with a fictional, lesbian, historian, space-nun interpreting the actions of a recurring fictional Salgado-MacKenzie character named Irena Sertorian as a prophet figure who extends beyond the page into Laszlo's world - The Infinite Future promising to be no less than a unifying tract of almost religious import - which brings to mind L. Ron Hubbard and Scientologists. Which brings to mind our own interpretive baggage we bring as readers of these faith groups.

I'm not helping am I?

It's a lot to unpack and I have to admit that while it seemed unnecessarily recursive the ideas stick like that stray bit of popcorn stuck somewhere in your back molars that you can't seem to tease out. And I will give Wirkus props for his power pop bona fides - shout out to The New Pornographers! (though Electric Version will always top Twin Cinema for me)

Despite being an absolute SEO nightmare, I love these Field Notes from Biblioasis. Thoughtful conversations from a Canadian perspective — I had to grab the latest On Class from the books editor at the Toronto Star, Deborah Dundas.

Things that I take for granted like reminiscing about back to school shopping. Fresh new notebooks, a mittfull of highlighters, the misguided ambition of a Day Timer, and Post-Its galore was something Dundas didn't have an experience of. Even the modest Laurentian pencil crayons were out of her reach growing up. She was poor, and for many that realization is weighted with a sense of shame.

It's that bootstrap mentality. That we live in a meritocracy and that a little elbow grease is all you need to pull yourself up. That hard work gets rewarded - the corollary being that it's your fault alone if you don't succeed. With failure comes shame, which prevents folks from talking about it openly, and absolves those who find themselves on the positive side of the ever growing wealth gap.

The pandemic seemed a moment ripe to consider class more closely. How those at the lowest rungs suddenly became incredibly invaluable to keep things running. Heroic pay for grocery workers. Banging pots and pans for our PSWs and nurses. The continued expectation of migrant workers keeping the food coming. But all that attention and sympathy dried up as soon as the pandemic ended. Dundas is writing to remind us of the every growing disparity between the haves and have-nots.

It's unfair and draws unintended parallels, but the entire time I read this I kept thinking of Jian Ghomeshi's attempt at taking us back to his childhood in the 80's growing up in Southern Ontario with his debut 1982. Like Jian, Cathal Kelly is a bit of a minor celebrity - a regular sports columnist for the Globe and Mail. But unlike Jian he's never been accused of sexual misconduct, and subsequently tried to make a whining comeback in the midst of the #MeToo moment. He's also a better writer than Jian but shares his shaggy dog style that is more tell than show. Strangely both books even feature a handful of lists.

Boy Wonders is still a wonderful account of growing up in Southern Ontario in the 70's and 80's. it hits all the familiar sweet spots of my childhood. Star Wars, bad TV, questionable decisions, and regrettable fashion choices. Cathal hits some beautiful notes over the course of the book and he manages to avoid having it devolve into narcissistic navel gazing. He's a likeable narrator with a collection of quick, thoughtful hits of a time I remember fondly as well. What's not to like?

This review is starting to feel a bit like the book, a tad rambling, somewhat wordy, but still entirely serviceable and good-natured. I'll damn the book further with the faint praise of “I liked it!”

It's rambling stream of consciousness akin to what Lucy Ellman is trying with Ducks, Newburyport - but even more disjointed and obtuse. Moon will spend a page recounting a story, then admit to having made the whole thing up which sends him on several tangents. It's an anti-travelogue, a depressive monologue, a barely coherent, plotless ramble filled with circuitous language that eats itself. Young-moon Jung is having a conversation with the reader inviting them into the very process of writing - often driven by boredom and looping, repetitive thoughts.

I've been reading a lot of Korean works lately and they're reacquainting me to the idea of Korean “han”. Go back a mere generation and see how Korean lives are influenced by the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, families split apart and the very real possibility of imprisonment and/or death. Han is the feeling of sorrow, injustice and anger that informs the Korean people but still has room for fierce hope.

It's 1948 and the Cho's arrive in the United States with their daughter Miran. They have left their sickly child Inja behind with an uncle and grandparents with the promise to fetch her as soon as they settle into their new home. But then war breaks out, Inja flees to Busan and the Cho's reunion with their daughter extends across years.

Chapters switch back and forth between Inja in South Korea while Miran struggles to find her place in an adopted homeland. I recognized Miran's mother's collections of colloquialisms. My father also kept a ledger of idioms, endlessly fascinated by these turns of phrases that otherwise made no sense like “kick the bucket” or “over the moon”.

The family is eventually reunited after over a decade apart and the reunion is not quite so simple. Inja has made a life for herself in Korea and mourns the loss of her friends and extended family. Miran has to contend with her sibling that is still a stranger to her.

A lovely read but more importantly I'm appreciating how many Korean works in translation are hitting North American shelves and am relishing collecting stories of my Korean culture.

Can I just say that I got a perverse joy every time David Bezmozgis talked of his home in Latvia thinking it as Latveria the home of Doctor Doom. Vaguely European vassals under the sway of an iron plated monarch with a penchant for villainous monologuing. Right - not helpful. God, I suck at reviewing short stories.

Listen the first, and titular, story just hooked me. It's just a tight, beautifully constructed, evocative piece about a man and his daughter buying a car door from a Somali in Toronto. And then it's followed by a couple of shaggy pieces that just don't quite gel for me and I'm off balance. But maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention. Bezmozgis has a way of laying out elements of a story that snap into sharp focus at the end. Victor returning to his homeland to settle a gravestone at the expense of his vacation resolves into dealing with his counterpart Ilya and how far removed he's become from the life that might have been his in Riga. The final story, The Russian Riviera ambles at a fine pace in a clear voice that I'd have been happy to get a full story from.

So like every short story review ever. Some hits, some misses but overall a solid piece of writing.

Our author suddenly finds himself unencumbered with his regular Toronto newspaper job and, remembering an all-too-brief visit to Yellowknife for a literary festival, packs his bags and heads North to work at the local paper. The Yellowknifer is a slim, twice weekly rag unique in that it focuses solely on Yellowknife, no reheated stories from wire copy — also clearly an early inspiration for Bidini's The West End Phoenix a local community newspaper he would launch on his return to Toronto.

And the book is a series of dispatches that upends any notion I have of this Northern capital city and the work of small town journalism. The folks at the paper might hew to certain stereotypes - some have landed here after being kicked out of everywhere else while for others this is but a pitstop to bigger and better - but the Indigenous Dene people are armed with a steely pragmatism and the folks that call Yellowknife home (“people live here!” As the mayor famously said on TV) are ok with who they are, free from big city pretension and wide-eyed small town optimism. It's a clear-eyed rendering of a summer in Yellowknife from a consummate storyteller (and a damn fine musician - Your Tragically Hip might get all the love but Whale Music is still the best Canadian album ever)

Thumps DreadfulWater is about as unlikely a name as you can get for a detective. He's a diabetic ex-officer turned photographer who, as the book opens, isn't sure if he's suddenly single, isn't sure if his car is a complete write-off and isn't sure what's going with his cat - who has decided to move in with a family down the road instead.

It's the fourth in Thomas King's DreadfulWater series - though you don't have to have read the previous three to jump right in. Cold case resurrecting, reality TV show, Malice Aforethought is in town to explore the suicide of the poor little rich girl who took a nose dive off a cliff years ago. Her family has always maintained that the brooding loner from the reserve, now a successful author, was responsible for her death.

When the TV show producer dies off the same cliff, in the same way, things really get interesting.

But before that we get Thumps trudging between a cast of unique characters from Stas Black Weasel, the bearlike Russian mechanic to Archimedes Kousloulas the Greek bookstore owner to Alvera Couteau the diner operator known to hold a grudge. It's a bit of local flair set to distract us from a bit of a plodding story. DreadfulWater does his best “I'm too old for this shit” but by the 20th chapter one can't help but think he doth protest too much. It's formulaic but cozy, and it give King plenty of space to judiciously leave clues for the reader. Pure comfort food.

The fun of Bourdain's debut Get Jiro! is completely erased with this prequel follow-up. The imaginative LA world where chefs rule like crime bosses and corporate fast food and ethnic mom and pop shops line the outer ring disappears in a tokenized dream of Japan with yakuza bosses and filial competition. Bourdain barely manages to wring enough of a plot to explain Jiro's tattoos and proficiency with a blade while completely sidestepping why the golden son of a massive empire would apparently forego all sleep to cook rice over and over again in the hopes of one day making sushi. There's not even that much in the way of food here. Just a hastily whipped together confection that seems completely devoid of calories.

Our city, much like so many others in North American right now, is struggling with homelessness, income precarity, and a generation that is seeing the possibility of home ownership slip from their grasp. A study shows that a third of households in the US pay more than 30% of their income just on rent and mortgages - but this was pre-pandemic, pre-supply chain disruptions, pre-double digit inflation.

Our obsession with single family dwellings needs to adapt. The 20th century's mass exodus into suburbia, fuelled by elitism and racism has eroded our sense of street-level community, increased social isolation, pushed us into car-dependency, and driven our tendency to conspicuous consumption as we struggle to fill our homes and “keep up with the Jones.”

Author Diana Lind proposes some possibilities available to us like Accessory Dwelling Units (or tiny homes), co-living arrangements, multi-generational housing and changing the zoning that often prevents any of this from happening. There is little talk of affordable housing here though. Gorgeously designed tiny homes that populate our social feeds are hardly an inexpensive alternative, and co-living feels more like up-cycled commune living for the affluent dot-com set looking to work remotely around the world.

This is a breezy tour through interesting housing alternatives without getting into the systemic issues that drive the lack of affordable housing. It submits to the unstoppable growth of suburbs and strip malls, and avoids the NIMBYism that often stalls any sort of possible progress. Maybe not the book's purpose, but I can't help wishing it poked at those issues a bit more.