The thing I like about this the most is how organic everything feels. Interactions and relationships feel not only believable, but textured. Sparse prose. Accessible. Does not engage in pain olympics like so much fiction that gets published demands of non cis white het narratives. Encapsulates nuanced of Canadian life and culture, again, easily, dynamically, and casually.

It’s a deceptively complex, writing something that gels and appears seamless. To keep a reader going when it’s “just” a daily, lived experience that is nuanced and real in a messy way, non-after-school-special way. Heck, I’d wager it’s tough to keep someone reading where any character is just dealing with an hollywoodized problem. Where conflict isn’t charged in to pick up a pace. Or where the inciting incident isn’t the hook for the short story.

This is great story craft. And where other short stories suffer, with a lack of cohesiveness and an uneven collection for a reader, this chooses to plot a through line with a series of interconnected short stories between the ones that are a big incongruous. Very smart choice, structurally and I was surprised at how affecting the story became broken up that way as well. Essentially egg to fully realized identity, but the subtle ways, especially around a messy relationship across it, was really well handled and deftly conveyed some internalized issues with both parties.

Bit criminal this didn’t at least make the short list, imo. By far and away beats out a couple of them, in my mind. The only jagged edges I could spot, which is why this is a 4.5 rounded up, is with some dialogue—only in certain stories. Where it was a bit stilted and felt like it changed the voice of the character to have something specific come across. One other very short story I didn’t connect with the voice on. And that’s why that throughline was an absolutely fantastic idea. Very impressed. Perhaps the only 5 star short story collection I’ve read. I can’t remember another off hand, anyway.

Pretty much confirms that my interest in celebrity memoirs only applies if I know who they are. Because boy do I not care at all about this book. DNF 20%. Be invested or move on, if you want my advice.

This is purely setup, so it’s hard to say? There is no arc… we follow Echo as she has similar days at school repeat: no friend interactions, in history class she learns about a war and is affected by it, imagining the past actively. And then she visits her mom at the end.

It’s very short, very little letters or dialogue. It would be something like judging and rating a book by the first chapter… yet they have purposefully made it in this format so you can’t not evaluate it as it’s been produced. I did put a hold on the next volumes from the library, so we’ll see where it goes. I’m guessing by all 4 of these small volumes will make up one large, larger sized graphic novel trade. 250ish pages, rather than 65-70. (Typically a trade is 140ish).

Very enjoyable. Tucci speaks to you. Would do it again.

This was what it said it was. I felt like the characters had no physicality to them though—merely the stand-ins for their respective tones of grief. And that led to some interesting visualization for me, but also made it feel like I was pretty removed from the story, despite the ostensible, somewhat artificial feeling, intimacy the text attempts to cultivate via the constant prescriptive rumination the characters telegraph to the reader.

That said, I’ve never been all that into the intersection of outright self-help and fiction. I prefer subjectivity and a well struck theme that makes you think, to the voice in fiction being the author communicating their “advice”. With one exception: Khalil Gabran.

I’ve been curious about this ever since reading Bunny by Mona Awad; one of my favourite books. It kept referencing The Waves and I didn’t even know what the premise of it was, just that it eluded to a pretty heavy melancholy.

I loved everything about this. Sinking into rich prose and layered meaning is my absolute favourite thing in this world, and this is all that, all the time. I’ll be rereading it, without a doubt.

What a fantastic concept for a book. I have done plenty of reviews what I talk about first person narration being interesting, but flawed or unreliable. We miss so much as an audience and as individuals when we aren’t privy to a perspective outside of ourselves. We lack a very fundamental component to our humanity, I think. We have to be perceived and consume that information to really form any sense of a whole.

The Waves takes this to heart, pivoting point of views in same situations, showing the differences of interpretations and the impacts the same event can have on a person is done so well here. Then the added component of this insular group speaking on and interpreting their friends across a lifetime - and the added component of it being what? autofiction / memoir / biography, is just so satisfying at a meta level as well.

It is fairly incredible to me how progressive this and To the Lighthouse feel, but especially this one. Certainly makes Woolf one of my all time favourites.

This is a pretty well selected compilations of essays. The first section on specifically the American Military Industrial Complex was the most illuminating for me. But if people aren’t aware of the the MIC extracting funds with thinly veiled subterfuge and it’s direct involvement in the Middle East, this would be even more valuable. It’s quite comprehensive. Though the last section not having to do with the theme of the book really was a bit strange. It does go toward corruption and fraud in similar ways to the MIC? But is otherwise unrelated, talking about banks, primarily.

I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stories and subcultures. This book is completely for me. People on alternate schedules. Vivid descriptive writing. Clearly the product of MFA writing. Goodbye Hemingway and thank god for it.

The problem is I have seen the TV show first, and the show actually takes what works in this and does it better. The best plot beats and lines of dialogue have already made an impression. The adaptation also wisely makes this less white girl and further fleshes out a lot of the minor characters. And what was changed completely is, again, better than what we find here.

The prose work is also a bit uneven here. The voice not quite solidified. In a way, this works well because our girl is coming into her own. She alternates between whiney adolescence and articulating really poignant and emotive interpretations of what is occurring. But the this works a little too well. Waiting for her to grow up or describe something interesting is about as captivating as it sounds.

But the aftertaste (hah) of this is still pleasant. It may not fully succeed at either angle, but it does do a pretty good at both and is one of the more interesting intersections. By no means is this a bad book. I think if I had read it first the show might be somewhat diminished, aside from the plot changes. That’s how good it is when it nails some lines. Some books never hit on something that good.

This was a really weird book.



I haven’t read much, or maybe any of these kinds of graphic novels before. Maybe it’s pulling from tropes from Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or Scooby Doo? But it literally doesn’t make sense, even when you just go with it.

About half of the questions raised are answered. Some casual racism thrown in there for good measure just to make it more confusing. Are we trying to make this “realistic” and people are racist newfies or is this all supernatural and, if that’s the case, maybe make a point with the racism or take it out?

But more than that, it’s just not communicating genre or expectations well and it routinely spends time on stuff that doesn’t matter, then does an exposition dump where they got all these clues we didn’t need to see them getting. Suddenly they’ve got a new contrived lead that takes them to a contrived place. The plot beats for an actual mystery, I don’t know what this is? Maybe I’m just completely missing what the is is; it’s completely possible. But it’s still a mystery, I assume. And in that case, at the very least the plot beats are contrived and mishandled, the pacing is terrible, and the dialogue is out of a B movie.

The only thing I can is, maybe just like a B movie, it’s so bad it’s supposed to be enjoyable?

This takes excerpts from a real letter written to the Winnipeg police force, imploring them to do better, and specifically telling them that should she go missing, to treat her like a white person and not like the proud indigenous person she is, because the police don’t care about them.

It’s short, simple, and heartbreaking. At the end there is the full letter as written and statistics about indigenous women going missing and/or murder rates, and other stats. Then there are resources too.

The art is fairly good, if simplistic. I can’t tell if the lack of perspective is on purpose or what, but it’s worth the 5-10 minute consumption and hopefully moves people enough to check out the stats and the letter, and so I think it succeeds exactly at doing what it sets out to do, regardless.