The Seaboard Review of Books, November 19, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 51 of The Seaboard Review of Books, November 19, 2025
In this issue:
As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, edited by Terese Mason Pierre (Fiction, Speculative Fiction)
Six for Saint-Pierre: A Sebastian Synard Mystery by Kevin Major (Fiction)
Essay: Thomas Becket: Medieval Antifa
The Price of Gold: Mining, Pollution, and Resistance in Yellowknife by John Sandlos and Arn Keeling (Non-Fiction)
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
Fiction
As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, edited by Terese Mason Pierre
As Terese Mason Pierre notes in her introduction to As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, “Canadian speculative literature is only growing, becoming richer and more diverse each year,” Contributing to this growing diversity, As the Earth Dreams
Six for Saint-Pierre: A Sebastian Synard Mystery by Kevin Major
In Six for Saint-Pierre, the latest of Kevin Major’s engaging crime novels featuring Private Investigator and tour guide Sebastian Synard, when the body of a young man is found on a beach on Saint-Pierre and Miquelon—a French-owned island territory located off the coast of Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula—our intrepid hero is drawn into a search for a kil…
Non-Fiction
The Price of Gold: Mining, Pollution, and Resistance in Yellowknife by John Sandlos and Arn Keeling
Enough arsenic is buried at the defunct Giant minesite to poison every person on the planet, let alone in the nearby city of Yellowknife, NWT (population 20,000) or the Dene community of Dettah (population 200). Arsenic trioxide is released when ore containing an arsenic-bearing compound, arsenopyrite, is roasted to extract gold. The arsenic waste can g…
Essay
Thomas Becket: Medieval Antifa
We do not know very much of the future Except that from generation to generation The same things happen again and again.
New, Old & Notable is a reoccurring column by Gordon Phinn in which he concisely reviews several books from the past and present.
In issue #2, Gordon talks about:
Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel
Lives Of Dead Poets by Penn Kemp
Exile: The Literary Quarterly (vol.47, #1)
The Atlantic Magazine (September 2025)
Click the banner to dive in!
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. Support your local bookseller or independent publisher if you can.)
Beatrice & Virgil by Yann Martel (Knopf Canada, 2010)
Risky, audacious tale of Henry, a famous writer. After his new manuscript is greeted with bemused scorn by his editors, Henry withdraws from literary life and, with his wife, moves to a town in Europe, where he pursues various interests unrelated to writing and responds to queries from readers of his published books.
One day, he receives a letter from a reader asking for his help. Enclosed with the letter is an excerpt from a story by Flaubert and a piece of dialogue in which a character named Virgil is trying to explain to a character named Beatrice the unique and essential nature of a pear. Henry meets the author of the letter--an elderly taxidermist--and learns that the dialogue is part of a work-in-progress in which Beatrice (a donkey) and Virgil (a howler monkey) discuss...well, everything. An undercurrent of violence and persecution occasionally breaks through the surface of the action--the Holocaust is evoked--which culminates in a bloody and terrifying climax.
The novel is a powerful meditation on unreasoning hate and victimization. Always thought-provoking, often despairing, its power is not diminished by offering no solution. Martel was unfairly slammed by critics for not writing Life of Pi.2. And while Beatrice & Virgil is flawed and will alienate some readers, it will satisfy if approached on its own terms. (Contributed by Ian Colford)
Ron Charach’s Robots in the Diner is not simply a charming children’s tale: the mystery surrounding Becky Murphy’s discovery would appeal to adults as well and spark discussions between generations. Set in Hank and Henrietta’s restaurant in Kitchener, Ontario, the story introduces imaginative robots dining after COVID. Like the young heroine, the book is smart and spirited and generously illustrated by Patricia and Robin DeWitt. Three light bulbs suspended from the ceiling highlight the diner, the text, and its mysterious meaning.
To attract customers to the local restaurant after the pandemic, Becky arranges for a couple of actors – Oswald and Zumwald – to be placed in the front booth by the window. They are soon joined by Herr Doppelganger in another part of the diner, who introduces an element from German folktale and initiates the doubling of appearances and reality, AI creatures and human beings. An allusion to Lot’s wife in the Bible invites other myths from the creation of the Golem to Abraham’s iconoclastic smashing of idols, which takes the form of Becky destroying robots and doppelgangers. Becky Murphy’s mystery is thoroughly engaging; the diner becomes highly successful and does take-out for fine fictional dining and stimulating discussion. There is much food for thought on the menu of this stocking stuffer. (Contributed by Michael Greenstein)
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