SaskBooks Reviews

Thin Pink Lines: My Life as a Nurse & Beyond by Muriel A. Jarvis and Mary E. Vandergoot Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Keith Foster $19.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-73-6 Patience pays big dividends, perhaps not all at once, but slowly over time. Muriel Jarvis relates how her patience and persistence paid off in her book, Thin Pink Lines: My Life as a Nurse & Beyond. Nominated for a 2013 Saskatchewan Book Award for non-fiction, the book is written by Mary Vandergoot, based on interviews and conversations with Muriel. Vandergoot writes in the first person, as though Muriel herself is telling the story of her life and accomplishments. Growing up in Kenaston, SK was a quick and brutal learning experience for Muriel, but she applied those life lessons throughout her career as a nurse. Her father died when she was only six and a half, and she had to help her mother, who was then only 26, raise her four younger siblings. A turning point in Muriel’s young life was when she assisted her mother in the birth of a child. She decided then that she wanted to become a nurse. The thin pink lines refer to the long…

Leaving Berlin by Britt Holmström Published by Thistledown Press Review by Sandy Bonny $ 18.95 ISBN-13 987-1-897235-91-1 I recently crossed Saskatoon driving behind a battered Honda Civic with the bumper sticker: ‘Change is inevitable – growth is optional.’ This might well be the motto underlying Britt Holmström’s first collection of short fiction. In Leaving Berlin this experienced Regina-based novelist tapers her prose to focus on female characters thrust, often unexpectedly, into moments of revelation. These women, of all ages and origins, struggle with the assumptions and constraints that structure their lives. Complicated relationships unravel, personalities collide, and as time and memory turn back on themselves, yearnings, hopes, and reality itself, beg to be reframed. Rendered in candid, conversational prose, sharp physical descriptions position the reader as confidante to Holmström’s characters, and they certainly do confide In “ The Company She Kept” a group of divorced medical-office mates startle themselves out of a comfortable friendship by first obsessing over, then energetically attacking the transparent lies of a newly hired temp. She is young, beautiful, and clearly unstable, but they find themselves driven to best her, delighting in her weaknesses as they swirl into self-improvement. Their circle is scattered, ultimately, by shame…