Victoria Day Edition! The Seaboard Review of Books: May 19th, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 20
Happy Victoria Day! In Canada, the “May Two-four” weekend is the official unofficial start of Summer.
The spring book releases are transitioning into summer reads, and we have some great selections for you this week, starting with Karen Smythe’s “A Town With No Noise”, Greg Rhyno’s “Who by Water”, and even a couple of suggestions for the younger readers in your household.
This issue welcomes the first review from Melanie Jackson, a new contributor to The Seaboard Review of Books. She says she had a lot of fun reviewing “A Whale Named Henry” for us! You can learn more about Melanie in the bio following her review.
For Emma Donoghue fans, Michael Greenstein takes a deep dive into “The Paris Express” and we’ll be posting a review with Ms. Donoghue in an upcoming issue.
As usual, a few Hot Takes are included for your consideration.
Here’s looking forward to Summer!
Review of the Week
A Town With No Noise by Karen Smythe
Truth is an elusive and hard-won commodity in Karen Smythe’s spellbinding novel, A Town With No Noise. Through her sharply observant narrator, Samara Johansen, Smythe tells a multi-faceted tale filled with shattering revelations and family secrets that leave Samara wondering who she is and how she should live her life.
Other Reviews
Fiction
Who by Water by Greg Rhyno
Greg Rhyno’s Who by Water returns readers to the world of Dame Polara, a heritage planner with a toddler, a shaky hold on work-life balance, and a growing reputation for unearthing more than just old buildings. What begins as a personal disruption with her ex-husband disappears while recording on Toronto Island quickly becomes a layered mystery, blendin…
Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with Lived Experience of Mental Health Issues
Trigger warning: mentions of mental health issues and suicide.
A Whale of a Tale, With an Irresistibly Impulsive Protagonist: A Whale Named Henry by Muriel Wylie Blanchet
A Whale Named Henry was originally published by Harbour in 1983. Now, in a new 2024 Harbour edition, the incorrigible Henry has resurfaced.
Non-Fiction
A Kid’s Guide to Plants of the Great Lakes Region by Phillipa Joly
The field guides I used as a child were informative in a matter-of-fact, and often dry, way. A Kid’s Guide to Plants of the Great Lakes Region by Philippa Joly offers a broader, more hands-on approach.
Corporate Control by Nora Loreto
In Corporate Control, Nora Loreto discusses free trade, the rise and fall of Canada’s Crown corporations, corporate influence over politics in Canada, and other topics. Loreto makes the argument that Canada’s landscape has dramatically shifted since the 1980s, moving from democratic control to market control.
Michael Greenstein Reviews:
Train & Terrain: The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
Hospitals, trains, prisons, cemeteries – these are some of the spaces Michel Foucault identifies as heterotopia or other places, liminal arenas that lie outside of normative dwellings. Emma Donoghue has used a hospital setting in her novel,
2025 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize Finalists
The Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award has been recognizing outstanding Atlantic fiction since 1991 when the endowment for the award was begun by Thomas Head Raddall himself. Since then, the award has continued to be funded by the Raddall family and has risen from its original $5000 to today's $30,000 prize, making it one of the most lucrative litera…
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)
Maple Springs by Pierre C. Arseneault
Maple Springs is a strange little town. The people are stranger, oblivious to what is happening right under their noses and a certain woman named Lucinda Mayweather likes it that way. You see, it is she who has cast a spell over the town through her famous baked goods and custom pheromone scents. Hence, everyone likes her. What is the secret to her beauty and desirability? The “shadow man” knows.
Then there is nine-year-old Duncan and his collection of action figures, but there's one that is more special to him than the others, a gorilla with cloven hooves and large curved antlers (see cover). Duncan's sister Robyn knows there's something strange going on in Maple Springs. Her best friend has disappeared, like so many other residents of the town over the years. Old and young men and women, there's no pattern to it and all the townspeople (including the police) are not concerned. They have all just “moved away” is the explanation, but Robyn for one isn't buying it.
To say any more about the plot of Maple Springs would be to give it away, and Mr. Arseneault has crafted a very good story with several well-timed twists that keep your interest page after page. It might not be a demonic horror novel as the cover might suggest, but there are horrific parts, along with a good dose of eeriness, suspense, and mystery. There's even a dash of humour as an unsuspecting mob hitman stumbles into the middle of this crisis in Maple Springs.
Good reading, but best read in the daylight because the shadow man lurks in those dimly lit corners! (Contributed by James M. Fisher)
Just A Still Life by J. Ivanel Johnson
Police Inspector Philip Steele is burned out and traumatized by his job, and mourning both his mother and his murdered fiancée. Seeking a change, he sells the family farm in Ontario and transfers to what he hopes is a quieter life in New Brunswick. However, it is suggested he take time off and so Phil flees to his beloved godmother Polly Jane’s quiet village, Victoria, the site of his happy childhood summer days. Sleep, her good cooking and long walks through his childhood memories seems just the cure, until the bodies start piling up, and dark secrets bubble to the surface of this bucolic little village. Assembling his team, Phil Steele sets out to prove the mysterious and alluring young schoolteacher, who has the motive and means, is not a vicious killer.
Just A Still Life by J. Ivanel Johnson, is the epitome of a cozy mystery. Set in 1971, in a village Angela Lansbury would feel right at home in, Johnson’s novel plays to both the innocence of the time period when life was uncomplicated by cell phones and the internet. It also explores its darker side of racism and women trapped by abusive, controlling men. It feels quaint but also timely in many ways. Ultimately, though, this is a story where the good guy outsmarts the criminal and gets the girl, a feel-good kind of book. You know it will all turn out in the end — that’s why a person reads a cozy mystery! — but the twists and turns, will keep the reader guessing and there are some surprises along the way. (Contributed by Heather McBriarty)
Favourite Daughter By Morgan Dick
Gushy and fast-paced, in this debut novel, an estranged daughter just might get 5 and half million dollars from her dead dad if she only goes to therapy. Of course, anyone who's dealt with alcoholism knows the 'if' there is a big one.
Mickey doesn’t CARE about that money “my teaching salary is more than enough”… said no one ever! For 5.5 million, I'd go to therapy for yeeeeeaaars! Even with some of the worst therapists I've had: looking at you Dr. “Don't stop coming. I need the money.”
Mikey drinks in front of her kindergarten students, making her tricky to like as a character. Her therapist sister takes a client to a speed dating event as… therapy? So some high-flown situations that will demand lots of suspension of disbelief. A father chooses the abandoned child over the dutiful daughter in his will and leaves them to sort things out. This is perhaps a tidy metaphor for being saddled with the sins of the parents in one's life.
The focus is on the brokenness of the central characters, and the author’s strength is in drama through dialog between characters, though the characters could stand to be differentiated more. There’s less of a sense of place and setting: I found myself wanting to know what different locations actually looked like. Still, this blurs the story into a tale that could be of everywoman, in any town. Mikey might be your neighbour, or even you. Overall, a companionable read that will leave a reader wondering how these half sisters might find each other in a world which broke them before getting to meet. (Contributed by Emily Weedon)
Book News
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For folks out Toronto way, once a month The Caledonian Pub at 856 College St is home to Drunk Fiction, an irreverent night of readings, where readers, listeners, authors and those who love them can gather, drink and nosh! May 27 is Dennis E Bolen touring his new book amaranthine chevrolet, along with Marianne Miller, Aviva Rubin and Sydney Hegele. Check in at https://emilyweedon.com/drunk-fiction for more info!
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Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
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