"On Our Radar" features books with buzz worth sharing. We bring you links to features and reviews about great new books in a multitude of genres from all around the Internet.
****
"...the pleasure and potency inherent in this lovely novel."
All That Belongs, by Dora Dueck
Reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press, by Karen Chisvin
Most of the discoveries Catherine makes on her pilgrimage confirm what she has already known or always remembered... There is not a lot of excitement or poignancy in these discoveries, but that does not diminish the pleasure or potency inherent in this lovely novel. It is, after all, much more than a story about digging up and coming to terms with one’s past, and even more than a story about the lingering effects of trauma and pain, and grief and guilt.
*
"Cities are spaces in which new and better worlds can be imagined."
Feminist City, by Leslie Kern
Reviewed in the Hamilton Review of Books by Sue Ferguson
This world isn’t built for women, literally. Our cities are designed and built in ways that perpetuate and accent women’s vulnerability and oppression. But cities are also spaces in which new and better worlds—feminist worlds that include racialized, disabled, Indigenous, queer and other marginalized communities—can be imagined and sometimes forged.
*
"The personal space of intimacy becomes a political space of survival..."
Tonguebreaker, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Reviewed in ARC Poetry by Sanchari Sur:
Piepzna-Samarasinha’s collection is also a testimony to queer love, where making love is an act of healing and survival. In “Prayer Ghazal for Orlando,” survival lies in disconnection from reality through reconnection with her lover: “The day the shooting happened I turned off my phone and fucked my lover.” The speaker compares their “cunts” to the “dance floor” of the location of the shooting. The personal space of intimacy becomes a political space of survival where the lovers deal with trauma through a celebration of life. The speaker is “satiated and thigh sore,” and yet “dressed and wound / to find [her] body.” It is this finding of one’s self through the love of another that Piepzna-Samarasinha calls survival.
*
"An effective tale of intergenerational understanding."
On the Rocks, by Eric Walters
Reviewed in Kirkus Reviews
There’s a soft masculinity here, an old-school “gotta keep those feelings deep down inside” way of thinking that gives the book a steady and quiet pace. Those looking for screaming matches and flipped tables will be left disappointed, but there’s an effective maturity to the relationship built here that is the book’s big draw... A short and simple but nevertheless effective tale of intergenerational understanding.