Nancy Schiefer, Special to Postmedia Network

Nancy Schiefer is a London freelance writer.

Stories

Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life by Christopher Dummit (McGill-Qeens University Press, $34.95)

Book review: Late PM King’s secret life laid bare

In a preface to his look at what he labels the secret life of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Christopher Dummit explains his book is a narrative history rather than a biography or scholarly treatise. The role of history, he claims, is to make an earlier era come alive in the minds of contemporaries, and he hopes to do so through the unravelling of a

Robert Lowell, Setting the River On Fire A Study Of Genius, Mania, And Character by Kay Redfield Jamison (Random House Canada, $40)

Book review: Poet’s ‘messy life’ makes good reading

In an introduction to Setting the River on Fire, Kay Redfield Jamison makes clear her book about renowned American poet Robert Lowell is not traditional biography. It is, instead, “a psychological account”, one in which she says she approaches Lowell’s wealth of high-octane poetry through the lens of the manic depressive illness.

Robert Lowell, Setting the River On Fire A Study Of Genius, Mania, And Character by Kay Redfield Jamison (Random House Canada, $40)

Poet’s ‘messy life’ makes good reading

In an introduction to Setting the River on Fire, Kay Redfield Jamison makes clear her book about renowned American poet Robert Lowell is not traditional biography. It is, instead, “a psychological account”, one in which she says she approaches Lowell’s wealth of high-octane poetry through the lens of the manic depressive illness, now labelled bipol

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Random House, $37)

Saunders’ tale of sorrow startles, stirs

When his publishers tout George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo as an astonishing feat of imagination, they are close to the mark. The novel, they claim, asks and attempts to answer, the most profound and complex of questions: “How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?”

Book review: Biography debunks the doleful queen

Accident rather than ancestry alone put Queen Victoria on the English throne in 1837, although ancestry played its part when aspirants scrambled for preference in a crowded field. But when bloodlines were finally sorted out, 18-year-old Alexandrina Victoria, who had been fifth in line to the throne and who was so tiny her feet didn’t touch the floo

Book review: Black’s witty musings hit the target

In his foreword to Backward Glances, a collection of the controversial journalism of Conrad Black, fellow journalist Mark Steyn writes the following: “Every aspect of federal prison is designed to crush the human spirit. I confess that I thought it would crush Conrad’s. Instead, swapping the company of the very highest in the land for that of the v

Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey by Elena Ferrante, Translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, $32)

Novelist sheds light on shadowy life

Although she has written seven novels in Italian and is, in translation, all the rage among the English language reading public, Elena Ferrante remains mysterious.

Jennifer Grainger’s Early London is a meticulously researched snapshot of city’s past

Book review: Photographic history

Readers interested in local history and in Canadian history in general, will enjoy a bonanza in Jennifer Grainger’s attractive and well- researched new book, Early London 1826-1914. Grainger, who holds a master’s degree from the University of London, and a master of library and information science from Western University, has done her homework.

A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections On A Writing Life by Pat Conroy (Doubleday, $35)

Book review: Grab bag pays tribute to author Conroy

When popular American writer Pat Conroy died in 2016 at the age of 70 with his new novel, The Storms of Aquarius, left unfinished, his editor, Nan Talese, searched the late writer’s files for further data on the novel.

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin (Random House Canada, $38.95)

Book review: Curdled madness fuels compelling tale

Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and familiar to many as senior legal analyst on CNN television, said in a recent interview he had long felt compelled to re-visit the 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, and of the aftermath of the crime.

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King (Doubleday Canada $39.95)

Book review: Monet and his mad pursuit of beauty

In the spring of 1914, with Europe on the brink of war, the future prime minister of France, Georges Clemenceau, drove to the village of Giverny, a short distance from Paris, to visit his friend, Claude Monet. The impressionist painter had been suffering from depression following the death of his second wife, Alice, in 1911, and the untimely death
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