Words and music
Fantasy, poetry, satire and other new works by Concordians
By Ian Harrison, BComm 01
We Meant Well (ECW Press, 2023, $24.95) by Erum Shazia Hasan, MA 06, a sustainable-development consultant, tells the story of an aid worker at a charitable orphanage faced with a terrible predicament when her former protegé, the daughter of a village chief, accuses a male colleague at the orphanage of assault. The novel was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Buster: A Life in Pictures (Knockabout Media, 2023, $25.99), a graphic novel by Ryan Barnett, MA 13, and Matthew Tavares, chronicles the adventures — and misadventures — of Buster Keaton’s life and career and how the legendary filmmaker and silent-film star influenced everyone from Dalí to Disney.
In Traveling the Old Ski Tracks of New England (University of Massachusetts Press, 2022, $24.95), E. John Allen, BA 65, tells of popular and lesser-known destinations that have contributed to the region’s landscape and ski culture.
Psychological thriller The Last Unsuitable Man (Signature Editions, 2022, $17.95), by Louise Carson, BFA 79, follows a mystery writer whose vacation on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast takes a strange turn when objects begin to disappear and a woman is found murdered.
Shirley Shoub, BA 82, wrote and illustrated Skipper’s Stories and Skipper’s Stories: Almost Twins (Oxygen Publishing, 2022 and 2023, $16.50 each), which chronicle the adventures of a beagle who yearns for love and acceptance among his adoptive family.
Chiara Laricchiuta, MA 09, wrote Recollections of My Soul (AOS Publishing, 2023, $14.95), an intimate collection of poetry largely focused on how personal hardships can impact and shape who we become over time.
Overseas Adventures, a self-published memoir by Arthur Shears, MA 78, formerly of UNESCO and the International Labour Organization, chronicles the author’s experiences in 16 countries as an international-development worker.
Full of anecdotes, humour and photographs, the book spans five decades, from Shears’s first assignment as a Canadian University Service Overseas volunteer in 1971 to a role as a consultant in Malawi in 2021.
Taches d’huile (Québec Amérique, 2023, $12.99) is the latest storybook from Jonathan Bécotte, BA 20, a multi-award-nominated writer who previously won Quebec’s Prix Cécile-Gagnon for his first children’s book, Souffler dans la cassette. Illustrated by Enzo LordMariano, Taches d’huile narrates a sensitive and artistic boy’s attempts to relate to his father, a car mechanic.
Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022, $39.95), by Eric Fillion, MA 12, PhD 19, examines the neglected history of relations between Canada and Brazil, as well as the role played by francophone artists, intellectuals and diplomats in Canada’s pursuit of an international identity.
In Pieces of My Self: Fragments for an Autobiography (Guernica Editions, 2023, $25), Keith Garebian, MA 71, surveys his conflicted, multicultural journey from India to Canada and his reinvention as a critic, poet and editor who has come to accept life’s joys and sorrows.
Five Stalks of Grain (University of Calgary Press, 2022, $28.99), by Ivanka Theodosia Galadza, BFA 15, is a powerful graphic novel about the Holodomor, the man-made famine that killed millions of people in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33.
Mark McGuire, PhD 13, cowrote a graphic novel with Alain Chevarier, Géants aux pieds d’argile (Moelle Graphik, 2022, $45), that explores the implications of new research on intergenerational trauma, as well as attitudes about masculinity and fatherhood. The book, McGuire’s first, was a finalist for Frenchlanguage comic book of the year by the Festival Québec BD and selected for “Shoot the Book!” by a jury of film producers at the 2023 Angoulême International Comic Arts Festival in France.
A new book by Danielle Boutet, MFA 00, L’intelligence de l’art: Regard sur les principes organisateurs de l’expérience artistique (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2023, $36), examines the creative psyche of the artist, as well as the participatory psyche of the observer. As a result, Boutet also profoundly underscores the vital human need for significance and to feel a sense of connection with others and the world at large.