River Street Reviews

Violence and Identity: Steven Mayoff Reviews a Simple Carpenter by Dave Margoshes

Violence and Identity: Steven Mayoff Reviews a Simple Carpenter by Dave Margoshes

After finishing A Simple Carpenter (Radiant Press, 2024) by Saskatchewan-based poet and novelist Dave Margoshes, the opening sentence from David Copperfield came to mind: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” 

This not-so-simple story of a ship’s carpenter, who has no memory of who he is or where he came from and goes by various names but finally settles on Yusef, chronicles his search for identity, his past and his place in the world in the modern-day Middle East.

Alchemizing the Mundane: Steven Mayoff Reviews Yellow Barks Spider by Harman Burns

Alchemizing the Mundane: Steven Mayoff Reviews Yellow Barks Spider by Harman Burns

The main narrative thrust of Yellow Barks Spider (Radiant Press, 2024), the debut coming-of-age novella by Saskatchewan-born trans-woman, filmmaker, sound artist and writer Harman Burns, is a rural boy’s journey toward transitioning to a woman. But to describe the experience of reading it in terms of coining a genre, I’d have to call it a Prairie Gothic Phantasia. 

Heart Close to Bone: Steven Mayoff reviews Widow Fantasies by Hollay Ghadery

Heart Close to Bone: Steven Mayoff reviews Widow Fantasies by Hollay Ghadery

Memoirist and poet, Hollay Ghadery has described her first book of fiction, Widow Fantasies (Gordon Hill Press, 2024) as “the result of my struggling to make sense of my fantasising about planning my husband’s funeral.” Not that she wants him dead, but rather because of her need for a more equitable partnership in her marriage, such are the circuitous paths of the psyche. 

Widow Fantasies is a unique collection of micro-fictions where Ghadery condenses her narratives into semi-oblique snapshots

Mind's Microscope: Steven Mayoff reviews Realia by Michael Trussler

Mind's Microscope: Steven Mayoff reviews Realia by Michael Trussler

The reality of poetry is its ability to speak to a part of ourselves that is asleep much of the time. When that part awakens, what is real and what is metaphor can seem indistinguishable. A sense of unreality enters our belief systems, altering how we see the world. 

RSR: Stella’s Carpet by Lucy EM Black

RSR: Stella’s Carpet by Lucy EM Black

If you do not have an appreciation for Persian carpets you will by the time you finish Lucy EM Black’s novel Stella’s Carpet. After reading Black’s vibrant descriptions of their artistry and rich history, I found myself searching the Internet for images of the patterns she writes about. But this is not a novel about carpets. At the heart of the story is a dysfunctional family with many secrets.

BOOK REVIEW: The Home Stretch: A Father, a Son, and All the Things They Never Talk About

BOOK REVIEW: The Home Stretch: A Father, a Son, and All the Things They Never Talk About

Everyone has parents. Everyone’s parents die. Yet the stories where parents and death intersect are unique.

George K. Ilsley’s recent memoir tells one such story. As a young adult, George left his Nova Scotia home, heading west, eventually landing in Vancouver—as far away as he could get while remaining in North America. Then, as he turns 50, his father turns 90, and his father needs, but doesn’t especially want, Ilsley’s care.