Summer 2004

The Indigo Girls’ ninth studio album, All That We Let In, resonates with an unabashed hopefulness that reflects the continued political and personal maturation of Emily Sailers and Amy Ray. Featuring six songs by Sailers and five by Ray, this solid collection gives listeners what they’ve come to expect: smooth harmonies, excellent musicianship and inspirational lyrics. Fans of the Georgia-based duo will find this recording strikingly similar in tone to 2002’s Become You—both thematically and musically.

Moses is the fictional author of a biography of his father, Sonny “The Charger” Lapinsky, from the immigrant Jewish neighbourhood of Kensington Market, Toronto. Sonny held the world middleweight title from 1948 to 1954. Moses’ need to research his father’s life in newspaper articles and interviews reflects the novel’s themes of guilt, loss and estrangement in two generations of a Jewish family. Tulchinsky forms her novel by beginning with the tragic structure of one family’s life.

World War II is vexatious. It vexes those of us who lost much in that horrific carnage. It vexes a current generation of youth who have been de-historicized from that period. It is difficult to write about the first war that ravaged Earth on a worldwide scale. Many have tried, some have succeeded. It is conscientious of Kerri Sakamoto to base her second novel on aspects of that war. A central site that serves various narrative functions in One Hundred Million Hearts is the Yakisuni Shrine in Tokyo.

Ann Eriksson’s first novel, Decomposing Maggie, is as heart-wrenching as it is life- affirming. When Maggie’s dying husband expresses his final wish—“take me to the forest ... let me lie down and decompose”—she chooses instead to ease his pain with an overdose of morphine. Upon his death, Maggie falls into a mourning and a guilt so deep that she pushes away her grieving children, her closest friend and a way of life that sustained her for years. She turns to collecting kelp, sea lettuce, fragments of shells and bits of driftwood from the more isolated beaches of Vancouver.