Travel book reviews - Paris and her Remarkable Women; and Bradt's Nova Scotia
February 2, 2010 |12:20 | Other Books By : Team X
Review: Nova Scotia is often lumped together in guidebooks with its neighbours, Canada's other Maritime provinces: New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador. Orkin makes a compelling case for Canada's second smallest province, where more Gaelic is spoken than in Scotland, and where you're as likely to spot a whale as a black bear.
He punctuates generic guidebook information (history, geography, where to stay and what to do) with lively fact boxes on the region's quirky diversity, such as the history of the lobster-peg industry, or an account of the arrival, in 1899, of the province's first car.
The guide includes plenty of maps and up-to-date information on how to spend a holiday in Nova Scotia – unless, like Orkin, you are so taken with the place that you end up buying a house and moving your family there.

There has been a vogue in the past few years for writing books about years. Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s is the latest contribution to the genre.
Modern day horror stories seem required to contain a healthy dose of gore and detached limbs, so it’s a pleasure to encounter a tale that depends solely on the tension of a setting to provide the chills. British author Sarah Waters’ latest novel, The Little Stranger, mounts a convincingly terrifying case as to why one should not live in a rambling, dilapidated old estate. Set in 1949 England, in a small countryside town, Hundreds Hall is home to the last of the landed gentry, who’ve lost all their money and are managing to survive by selling off family heirlooms and shutting off wings in their ancient abode. The local doctor, Farraday, also the narrator, is called out to attend to one of the two servants left and becomes entwined with the family, the Ayreses, as he recalls how his parents worked as servants themselves at Hundreds. The owners, a family composed of fading beauty Mrs. Ayres, hearty daughter Caroline and war-wounded son Roderick, all seem to be on the verge of something…something not good. Farraday describes the ghostly incidents and psychological horrors that follow with a tense mix of scientific distance and a yearning, unaware desire to be one of them, one of the aristocrats. The Little Stranger is a book about ordinary life and Waters’ deftly lulls you into a sense of security, so the frightening moments become ever more magnified.
On the eve of their Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband Jimmy--still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school--to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search.
In her excellent recent essay, “Shakespeare’s Daughters”, Rachel Cusk bemoans that novels about home life are still considered inferior to those tackling supposedly weightier matters like war, and calls on those who fictionalise “domesticity and motherhood and family life” to champion their subject with renewed honesty. Lisa Moore’s February is a glowing example of just how ably this may be done.
A fair-minded man, T. Jefferson Parker gives Second Amendment zealots a full voice in this artful and frightening thriller about gun trafficking on America's southern border.
Joshua Ferris’s first novel, Then We Came to the End, won rave reviews through its artful and humorous look at office life. The book was honored with the PEN/Hemingway Award, and announced the arrival of a fresh, young talent on the scene.














