The Seaboard Review of Books September 8, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 34 of The Seaboard Review of Books, September 8, 2025
In this issue:
Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, edited by Sonia Sulaiman
The Orange Notebooks: A Novel by Susanna Crossman
Wrestling With Cadence by Dennis Lee
Also, in Poetry:
Something for the Dark by Randy Lundy
Review of the Week
Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, edited by Sonia Sulaiman
Full disclosure: I met Sonia Sulaiman through an online Writing the Other workshop, and we were part of a writers Discord group for a while. When I saw that she edited this anthology, I requested it for review on that slim association alone. But I’d read some of her fiction and poetry, valued her feedback, and admired her taste. I was eager to see what …
Fiction
The Orange Notebooks: A Novel by Susanna Crossman
Following the death of her six-year-old son, Louis, Anna is hospitalized. At this time, she sets out to gather her son’s story, addressing her narrative to him in a set of orange notebooks. Her purpose in writing is to piece together all the details that are part of his life; she is haunted by him and wants to bring every memory and every recollection t…
Non-Fiction
Wrestling With Cadence by Dennis Lee
Wrestling with Cadence: Essays on Writing and Intuition by Dennis Lee includes ten essays written by Lee over the course of five decades. Some essays were included in an earlier form in Lee’s 1998 collection Body Music, though they have been significantly altered—in some cases, as Lee notes in the preface to
Poetry
Something for the Dark by Randy Lundy
Randy Lundy is an extraordinary poet, and Something for the Dark is an extraordinary book. Lundy operates at a level of awareness that eludes most humans. He’s a skilled naturalist when observing the local flora and fauna, and a psychologist when he turns his gaze toward his own species. He’s a philosopher working across disparate religious and cultural…
Michael Greenstein Reviews:
The Hinge and Plunge of Modernist Prose: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The latest edition of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is published by the New York Review of Books (Distributed by Penguin Random House Canada) and edited by Edward Mendelson. As Mendelson explains in his textual notes, “There can be no ‘definitive’ edition of a novel written by an author who had better things to do than sanitize its inconsistencies or p…
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. Support your local bookseller or independent publisher if you can.)
What's the Point?: An Irreverent History of Point Pleasant Park By Steven Laffoley
Point Pleasant Park is a popular, well-known and well-used park in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and if you ever wanted to know all there is to know about it, look no further. As in his other “irreverent guides,” Laffoley feeds us a lot of interesting information with side notes and a good sense of humour along the way.
In What's the Point?, Laffoley explains the origins of Point Pleasant Park, talks about the many monuments and historical sites around the park, discusses the dizzying array of flora and fauna (including the happy, frolicking, off-leash dogs), the tragedies that occurred, and how the park has been used and what it has meant to different groups of people over the years. You'll learn things you've always wanted to know, as well as things you never knew you wanted to know. You'll wonder when the next trivia night at the pub is (and think about lending the owners a copy of your book). (Contributed by Naomi MacKinnon)
Our Contributors in the News:
TSR Contributor Melanie Marttila is going to be reading in the Apposite Poetry Series in London, Ontario on September 10th.
Emily Weedon:
More Drunk Fiction info at Emily Weedon’s website: https://emilyweedon.com/drunk-fiction
Lisa Timpf's article “Anthology Editing: Advice and Insights from Those Who’ve Been There” appeared on Jane Friedman's blog, September 2, 2025. In this article, three Canadian anthology editors and two publishers (one based in Canada, and one based in the United States) weigh in on what makes a good anthology editor, and provide tips for those who might be interested in trying their hand at this sometimes difficult, but often rewarding, role. The article can be found at https://janefriedman.com/anthology-editing-advice-and-insights-from-those-whove-been-there/
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Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief