Travellers May Still Returnby Michael KenyonPublished by Thistledown PressReview by Juliana Rupchan$20.00 ISBN 978-1-77187-187-7 Travellers May Still Return is a collection of three fiction pieces: two novella-length stories, bridged by a third, shorter piece. Michael Kenyon is based out of Victoria, but the collection is published by Saskatoon’s Thistledown Press, known for publishing literary poetry and fiction. Kenyon’s previous work includes five books of poetry, four chapbooks, and seven books of fiction, including The Beautiful Children, which won the 2010 ReLit Award for best novel. This extensive cross-genre experience shines through in Travellers May Still Return. The stories have the tension and smoothly crafted characters of a practiced fiction writer, woven through vivid imagery and existential questions that evoke a poetic practice. South and Central America are the main settings, and a strong sense of place as well as a tension of displacement are powerful forces in the longer novellas. While the narrative is not always easy to follow, Kenyon has created striking stories with just the enough mystery to stick in a reader’s mind, like a vivid dream half-remembered. The first novella, “The Prehistory of Jesse Green”, does an excellent job of sketching the central characters, and explores desire…

Indexby Roula PartheniouPublished by Dunlop Art GalleryReview by Juliana Rupchan$29.99 ISBN 978-1-988404-01-1 Index is an art catalogue collecting the works of Roula Partheniou, a Toronto artist working primarily in sculpture. Index was published in Saskatchewan by the Regina Public Library’s Dunlop Art Gallery, and Regina locals may also recall seeing Partheniou’s exhibit, “Chalk to Cheese”, which was on display at the Sherwood branch of the gallery in fall 2016. Even a casual observer could find this catalogue satisfying to flip through: Partheniou’s work deals mainly with simplified, handmade replicas of everyday objects, making the book a veritable I-Spy of recognizable items. The primary colours and smooth designs have an oddly satisfying and almost relaxing effect, but closer observation also draws one into a strange in-between world, real but not quite, with the unsettling air of an optical illusion. It’s these questions, about how we perceive objects we might initially dismiss as mundane, that are central to the collection. The book includes photos of eight different exhibitions: several, including “Chalk to Cheese” consist of an array of replica household objects, leaving the viewer to determine possible connections between them or logic behind their arrangement. Others, like “Twofold”, take a more abstract…