Weekend Picks

Though you won’t be able to check out and experience the latest addition to Indigenous Film this weekend, you are able to sign-up for the Library’s screening of Three Feathers hosted by the inimitable Richard Van Camp!

Three Feathers

Based on the novel of the same name by Richard Van Camp, ‘Three Feathers’ is set and was filmed in Fort Smith. Flinch, Bryce, and Rupert have been sent by their Elders to live nine months on the land. There, the young men learn to take responsibility for their actions and acquire the humility required to return home.

Movie Promo

St. Albert Gazette Great Reading

Book picks as published in the March 20, 2019 St. Albert Gazette. For more great reads, check here.

By chance aloneBy chance alone : a remarkable true story of courage and survival at Auschwitz

By Max Eisen

More than seventy years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, this Canadian Holocaust memoir details the rural Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau, back-breaking slave labour in Auschwitz I, the infamous “death march” of January 1945, the painful aftermath of liberation, and a journey of physical and psychological healing. A Canada Reads 2019 pick.

 

SuzanneSuzanne : a novel

By Anais Barbeau-Lavalette

Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists, abandoned her husband and young family, Barbeau-Lavalette hired a private detective to piece together Suzanne’s life. This is a fictionalized account of Suzanne’s life over eighty-five years. A Canada Reads 2019 pick.    

Joanne’s Mystery Picks

911ocyq2szlTHE DARKNESS (HIDDEN ICELAND #1) by Ragnar Jonasson

DI Hulda Hermannsdottir of the Reykajavik Police is months away from retirement when her boss approaches her to say that a replacement has been hired for her position and it would be best if she packed up her belongings and left as soon as possible. Blindsided by this announcement, Hulda begs to remain for a few weeks while she works a cold case.

Hulda does not come across as a particularly nice person and we learn more about her character as the story progresses, reinforcing this feeling about her. Magnus, her boss, is an odious man, and is ambivalent towards Hulda: at the same time that he is praising her for her years of service he’s berating her for her actions in the case she’s currently working.

It’s never certain with a translation whether or not the problems with a story are a result of the translation or if they exist in the original. This novel “reads” well, but the story is so flawed that it’s inconceivable. It’s hard to fathom that a DI would act as Hulda does in this tale, leading up to an ending that is anything but satisfying.

One Dagger
Joanne gives this “1 dagger out of 5”

St. Albert Gazette Great Reading

Book picks as published in the March 13, 2019 St. Albert Gazette. For more great reads, check here.

Witch elmThe Witch Elm : a novel

By Tana French

Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life – he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. A spellbinding standalone from one of the best suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, when we no longer know who we are.

 

smile roddy doyleSmile : a novel

By Roddy Doyle

A breakout from the Booker-prize-winning novelist Roddy Doyle. A psychological suspense novel unlike any he’s written before, about how we contend with the past, trauma, guilt and regret, and the uncertainty of memory. It’s the memories of high school, and of one particular Brother, that he cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.