The Delivery Room reviewed in the NYT

The Delivery Room, by Sylvia Brownrigg
9781582434247 | $18.00 pb | in stock
Counterpoint / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Sylvia Brownrigg’s latest novel was reviewed in the New York Times on November 16th:

The Shrinking Woman

By CHRISTOPHER BENFEY

The Bravermans, Peter and Mira, traffic in other people’s stories. He is a “stuttery professor of Russian” and a respected translator of Solzhenitsyn. She is a psychotherapist and professional “gatherer of stories.” Born in the “difficult country” known as Yugoslavia before its bloody dissolution, she is steeped in the work of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott. The Bravermans live in the “fundamentally grubby” London neighborhood of Camden Town, the silence of their cramped and childless apartment broken only by the incessant complaints of Mira’s upscale patients who, as the millennium approaches, have one thing on their minds.

“Everybody that spring seemed to be talking about children,” Sylvia Brownrigg’s ambitious new novel begins. “Having them, not having them.” Peter takes to calling Mira’s office “the delivery room,” though the only babies delivered there are the children her patients once were. Each had been a child, as Mira learned from Klein, “who had suffered unfathomable, crucial sadnesses, whose excavation might make easier futures possible.”

Like garrulous pilgrims from “The Canterbury Tales,” these grown-up children, to whom she attaches stereotyped monikers, parade into Mira’s office to offer up their narratives of woe. The Mourning Madonna cannot get over her grief for her stillborn child, Cassandra. The American, a journalist,who writes a bitchy column called “A Broad From Abroad,” is looking for a sperm donor. The Aristocrat is ready to give IVF — “like the initials of some splinter terrorist group, the Infertility Victory Front” — one last try.

America and the World in the Winnipeg Free Press

America and the World, by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft
9780465015016 | $29.50 hc | in stock
Basic Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

The Winnipeg Free Press reviewed America and the World on Nov. 16:

America and the World

Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy

Reviewed by George A.  MacLean

This isn’t a typical book on American foreign policy. As the subtitle suggests, it’s a transcript of a conversation — several conversations, really — covering the War on Terror, peace in the Middle East, the rise of China, prospects for Russia, new directions in Europe, an impending economic crisis, and what Barack Obama should do in his first 100 days in office.

That’s a lot of material for one book.

But it’s those holding the conversation that makes this book so remarkable. Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser for president Jimmy Carter and is one of the most prolific authors on American foreign relations.

Across the table is Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford and military assistant to Richard Nixon. Their combined perspective, expertly moderated by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, may be just transcribed conversation, but the analysis and insight here is as wide and deep as many a carefully researched monograph on the subject.

Readers who expect to know what Brzezinski and Scowcroft will say on the basis of their previous public lives will be surprised. Neither toes the party line and there’s a fair bit of consensus regarding what U.S. foreign policy needs to look like under the next administration.

Far from a nostalgic view of the way things were, this is a forward-looking book, mindful of the missteps U.S. presidents made since the end of the Cold War.

The apprehension Brzezinski and Scowcroft feel, however, is not entirely the result of U.S. mistakes or inaction. There are seismic shifts occurring from the outside: global political activism, the end of the West as the epicentre of global culture and economics, and the rise of universal challenges such as environmental degradation, poverty and injustice. America’s future will not be self-defined in this new reality.

The title is a nice summary of the main argument in the book. America is not capable of acting alone anymore. Co-operation will be essential; in fact, it’s been essential for some time, but this has been lost on the current administration.

That’s not to suggest that the U.S. won’t be a leader, but it must do so through inspiration, not dictation. The only prospect for the U.S., Brzezinski says, is “enlightened leadership,” what Scowcroft refers to as “the guiding light.”

A book like this one has some shortcomings, too. The content is reflective, so it’s not carefully researched, reviewed or revised. There are places where either Brzezinski or Scowcroft would surely want a rewrite.

Canada, for example, is only mentioned once, even though our trading relationship with the U.S. is bigger than that of China (which warrants a full chapter), Mexico and Japan combined, or the EU combined (also a chapter).

That, and the fact that Canada is the only member of both of the major U.S. military alliances (NATO and NORAD), should lead to a slightly longer index entry.

But it’s a more serious example of the shortcomings of a book like this. That one comment about Canada is an off-handed remark about how Russia’s concern about Georgia or Ukraine in NATO is like what the U.S. would feel if Russia wanted Canada in its alliance. This is hardly a suitable comparison.

All the same, this is a highly readable book. Brzezinski and Scowcroft remind us that the traditional problems of power and geopolitics haven’t gone anywhere. A new global political awakening means future U.S. administrations must address these problems differently.

George A. MacLean is head of political studies at the University of Manitoba.

Girl Boy Girl on Q

Girl Boy Girl, by Savannah Knoop
9781583228517 | $19.95 pb | in stock
Seven Stories Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Savannah Knoop (a.k.a. J.T. Leroy) is taping an interview for CBC Radio’s Q this Friday, Nov 21st, and will most likely air on Mon, Nov 24th.

Free to Be You and Me author on The View

Free to Be You and Me, by Marlo Thomas
978-0762430604 | $21.00 hc | in stock
Running Press / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Marlo Thomas, author of Free to Be You and Me, is scheduled to appear on The View the week of Dec 2nd.

Andy Stanton wins inaugural Roald Dahl Funny Prize

Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear, by Andy Stanton 
978-1-4052-4179-3 | $9.95 pb | in stock
Egmont Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Andy Stanton was awarded the first ever Roald Dahl Funny Prize for Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear. He won the prize for the Funniest Book for Children Aged 7 to 14.
The announcement was made in London on November 13.

Groundwork Guides on The Point

Groundwood publisher Patsy Aldana was interviewed on CBC Radio’s The Point on Monday, Nov. 17th about the Groundwork Guides.

Cities, by John Lorinc
9780888998194 | $11.00 pb | in stock

Slavery Today, by Kevin Bales and Becky Cornell
9780888997739 | $11.00 pb | in stock

Oil, by James Laxer
9780888998163 | $11.00 pb | in stock

The Betrayal of Africa, by Gerald Caplan
9780888998255 | $11.00 pb | in stock

Being Muslim, Revised Edition, by Haroon Siddiqui
9780888998873 | $11.00 pb | in stock

Climate Change, by Shelley Tanaka
9780888997845 | $12.95 pb | in stock

Empire, by James Laxer
9780888997074 | $12.95 pb | in stock

Genocide, by Jane Springer
9780888996824 | $12.95 pb | in stock

Pornography, by Debbie Nathan
9780888997678 | $12.95 pb | in stock

Sex for Guys, by Manne Forssberg
9780888997715 | $12.95 pb | in stock

Deborah Ellis interviewed in School Library Journal

Off to War, by Deborah Ellis
9780888998958 | $12.95 pb | in stock
Groundwood Books (HarperCollins)

The School Library Journal has interviewed Deborah Ellis about her new book, Off to War:

Off to War

By Debra Lau Whelan — School Library Journal, 11/5/2008

In Deborah Ellis’s Off to War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children (Groundwood, 2008), the kids of American and Canadian soldiers talk openly about what it’s like to have a mom or dad—and in some cases both—deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ellis’s follow-up book Voices of War (Groundwood), which contains interviews with Iraqi children now living in Jordan as refugees, is due out in January.

What struck you most about the kids you interviewed?
A lot of the kids I talked to seemed really, really lonely. Things had changed with their parent and nobody would talk to them about what was going on. And they didn’t want to bring it up just in case it made their parent more sad. Sometimes the parent would come back really angry and uptight and not want to spend any time with their kids any more. So they wouldn’t see this parent for 16 to18 months, and then the parent would come back, and they still wouldn’t have their parent. Other parents came back changed for the better. They used to be crabby and nitpicky, and they came back so grateful to be with their families, and little things didn’t bother them any more.

Was there a common thread in the stories you heard?
It certainly differed between the full-time army and the reserves. The kids from the National Guard families were really thrown for a loop. They hadn’t expected their parent to go to war. It wasn’t on their radar. A lot of them just didn’t know how to deal with it. And a lot of the families around them didn’t know how to deal with it. Often, they would be the only kid in their school or even the only kid in their town going through that experience, and they didn’t have anybody else to talk to. Kids with parents in the military fulltime and whose parents came home—they seemed fine. But when talking to them, they would start to cry remembering the time that they’d last seen their parents.

Did age play any role in how well they handled the separation?
The older kids took on a lot more of the burden for caring for the family, but they all kind of missed their parent really, really deeply.

Were any of these kids, their friends, or even parents antiwar?
The military is not a monolithic organization. It’s full of a wide variety of people with a wide variety of opinions and backgrounds. Some of the kids I interviewed, their parents were very active in the antiwar movement, Veterans Against the War and so on. Some of the kids had been at antiwar protests and had spoken at rallies, and of course, some of the kids approached it from a very different perspective, believing that the protesters were in fact traitors to the country. So there were both of those opinions. Some kids talked about classmates who knew they were military kids, and some said kids assumed that if their parent was in the military that they just wanted to go and kill people. They didn’t have a realistic sense of what was going on over there or what the military was all about.

How did you find the roughly 20 kids in your book?
In Canada, I approached the military, military organizations, and groups that work with military kids. Then to get to Fort Bragg (in North Carolina), I had to get permission from the army public relations office in New York City. I interviewed probably three times as many kids who’ve actually ended up in the book.

Did substance abuse become a problem?
If I interviewed kids alone without a parent present, they would tell me things about alcohol abuse and things like that relating to their parents. But I couldn’t put that into the interview because that would be harmful to them down the road. They also told me stuff like the escalation of tensions and the effects of that.

How can school librarians help these kids?
The kids were really curious about where their parent was. And some schools took the approach of “Let’s just not talk about Afghanistan. Let’s make it a place where kids don’t have to deal with it.” And other communities took the approach of “Let’s talk about it a lot. Let’s get to know the people over there.” And they did displays and all sorts of things. I found that the kids were really hungry for information, so libraries can put on displays about Iraq, Iraqi culture, society, and history, as well as Afghanistan.

What audience does your book target?
I was initially only targeting myself because I wanted to find out how these kids were managing. I think the publisher had in mind that it could be for military kids to read and glean through for information about how they could manage to get through what they’re going through. Hopefully, the adults who work with these kids can read it and get a sense of how they can be more useful when it comes to what these kids are experiencing. And for kids who are not part of that world, it gives an interesting perspective of a different way to look at what’s going on when they see it in the news.

Did any of the interviews leave a lasting impression?
The thing that made me saddest about doing this book is I would ask the kids if they could imagine a world without war, and I’d say 95 percent of them hadn’t even thought of it. They just assumed that war is a natural part of our lives. It hadn’t even really entered their minds that there could be an alternative. And while this isn’t a scientific sample by any means, if there is any truth at all to this theory that these kids haven’t had their imagination opened up enough to be able to think about a world without war, then we adults have a lot of work to do in order to make that seem to them like a possibility that they could start to work on.

Learn to Draw Comic Art on YTV’s The Zone

Learn to Draw Comic Art, by Anthony Stanberry
978-0973712230 | $9.95 pb | in stock
White Knight Book Distribution (Georgetown Terminal)

On November 24th between 4-6pm, Anthony Stanberry will be on YTV’s The Zone promoting his new book Learn to Draw Comic Art, as well as his other titles, Blac Ice, and Create Your Own Comic Book 1+2. He will be drawing the host as a character from the new book and will also be having a drawing competition with the host.

Larry Beinhart on CBC’s The Hour

Salvation Boulevard, by Larry Beinhart
9781568584119 | $26.95 hc | in stock
Nation Books / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Larry Beinhart, author of Salvation Boulevard, will be in Toronto Nov 20–22 as an invited guest of the Centre for Inquiry and the University of Toronto. He has been confirmed for CBC TV’s "The Hour" for a taping on November 20, air date TBC.

Canada Reads 2009 titles to be announced on Nov. 25

Canada Reads 2009 Title from Talonbooks
9780889229990 | $19.95 pb | ctn qty 22 | in stock
Talonbooks / Publishers Group Canada (Raincoast)

Canada Reads 2009 Title from Anansi
9780887848285 | $18.95 pb | ctn qty 32 | in stock
House of Anansi (HarperCollins)

Just a reminder that the next round of Canada Reads titles will be announced on CBC Radio on Tues, Nov. 25. The above dummy ISBNs are available to order from Raincoast and Anansi, respectively.