The Seaboard Review of Books: June 30, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 25
In this issue:
There’s Canadian art, two east coast mystery/thrillers, a book on medically assisted suicide in Canada, and two poetry reviews this week.
A summer break:
There will not be a Monday issue next week, but we’ll return on the 14th of July. We hope your summer is off to a good start wherever you are (or winter, if you’re reading this from the Southern Hemisphere)!
Review of the Week
Devouring Tomorrow, edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella
There are not many of us who can say that food does not play a big role in our lives. Much of our time is spent thinking about food, shopping for food, preparing food, and eating food. Devouring Tomorrow is a collection of short stories that imagines what food or food culture might be like in the future. The way climate change is progressing, it is not …
Other Reviews
Fiction
Hard Cases: A Newfoundland Thriller by Gareth Mitton
Back in 2020, when I was at the helm of a previous book review site, an unknown (to me) author reached out asking for a possible review of his sci-fi novel Pedestal. While I wasn’t the one to review it for the site, award-winning author Bill Arnott chose to review it and said of Gareth Mitton:
Salt On Her Tongue: A Kes Morris File by C.S. Porter
Detective Kes Morris is back, but after finishing a mandatory leave, she’s seemingly thrown into a fluff case: a missing girl, a distraught boyfriend and a high-powered father who wants things wrapped up quickly and quietly. Arriving in a sleepy fishing village, Kes finds that neither the locals nor the powerful Bay of Fundy, are willing to give up thei…
Non-Fiction
Unravelling MAiD in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care
Edited by Ramona Coelho, K. Sonu Gaind, and Trudo Lemmens, Unravelling MAiD in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care includes fifteen chapters exploring various aspects of Canada’s MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) legislation and implementation. The contributors discuss ethical and philosophical concerns, the potential for pressure t…
To See What He Saw: J.E.H. MacDonald and the O’Hara Years, 1924 - 1932 By Stanley Munn, Patricia Cucman
Can you imagine loving a place so much that you would journey on foot and by horseback through an untamed land year after year just to paint? Well, that is exactly what artist J.E.H MacDonald did. Between 1924 and1932, the English Canadian artist made seven trips into Yoho Provincial Park in The Rocky Mountains of British Columbia to spend time painting…
Poetry
Swinging Between Water and Stone by Steven Mayoff
PEI writer Steven Mayoff has produced a novel, a short story collection, and two-and-a-half poetry books. Where’s the half come from? Swinging Between Water and Stone is actually a revised and expanded version of one he published with Guernica Editions in 2019. His foreword explains that he has added four new poems and changed many line breaks, mostly l…
Michael Greenstein Reviews:
Hot Takes: Brief Notes on Books Present & Past
(Note: clicking on the underlined link takes you to the book’s publisher page or Amazon.ca for more information or for purchasing purposes)
A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb
The handsome thief inches along a ledge. From a window, a dowager screams, “Oh!” But, on closer look, “Oooo…”
For those of us who’ve been robbery victims, a sighting of Cary Grant, as above in To Catch A Thief, is sadly uncharacteristic. Or, for that matter, of Jon Hamm heisting valuables in the new series Your Friends and Neighbors. For me, robbery was the muddy footprints a burglar tracked when removing our stereo.
Blame E.W. Hornung for glam fictional thieves. To Arthur Conan Doyle’s indignation, Hornung riffed off Sherlock Holmes to create Raffles, a brilliant, charismatic thief-protagonist. Problem: Raff could be a little too glam. Raffles-bedazzled, the kid brother of a friend of mine, broke into neighbours’ houses and made off with any sweets and spare change he could find. Not from need: kid bro lived in a tony Toronto ’hood and attended a veddy upper-crust private school.
Inevitably, kid bro got caught. If only Dean Jobb’s 2024 biography A Gentleman and A Thief had been around for him to read. Jobb’s subject, the real-life dashing thief Arthur Barry, robbed his merry way through 1920s New York society. With Raff-like cool, he once even lifted jewellery minutes after chatting up Edward, Prince of Wales. Unlike Raff, Barry couldn’t forever outwit the police, and ended up serving years in prison. Too bad for him, but a good cautionary tale for would-be Grants/Hamms/Raffs. (Reviewed here.) Contributed by Melanie Jackson.
Book News
If you would like to have your book event (or any other bookish news) shared in our Monday emails, please contact James at editor[at]theseaboardreview.ca!
Lisa Timpf:
Lisa Timpf's story “Going with the Flow,” about her Border Collie mix “Sneeks”, was included in Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Dog. Amy Newmark discussed this story, along with one other story from What I Learned from the Dog, on a recent Chicken Soup for the Soul podcast. You can find the link here:
https://www.chickensoup.com/podcast/
To listen to this episode, click on “podcast” in the upper menu, then click “Listen to the Chicken Soup for the Soul podcast.” Select “What a Clever Dog” from the episode list.
Emily Weedon’s Drunk Fiction
Yes, The Seaboard Review of Books is sponsoring “Drunk Fiction”! One of the books for sale at the event will be free for a lucky attendee. Mark your calendars for July 22nd! The Caledonian is at 856 College Street in Toronto.
TSR Subscriber Count
We now have 430 434 subscribers! That number includes our paying subscribers (thank you!) as well as our free ones. Being a paid subscriber (for as little as $5/month) allows us to give out honorariums to our team of contributors, which keeps them dedicated to writing reviews of books we think are worthy of your time. Click the button to see all the Substack options.
Other support options:
Ko-fi: you can choose from one-time donations to a $5/month membership.
Patreon: memberships from $3/month on up.
PayPal.me/theseaboardreview For one-time payments.
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
TSR’s Social Media Links
