MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
Canada’s environmental self-delusion
SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a graphic novel that lays bare the human and environmental costs of opencast mining in Alberta
Illustrations: Kate Beaton
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
MATTHEW HAWKINS welcomes an engaging and nourishing account of the queer subculture that flourished in London between WWII and partial decriminalisation
RON JACOBS welcomes the political lessons for today, about organisation and withdrawal from conflict, made by an erudite and conversational biography
Ducks — Two Years in the Oil Sands
by Kate Beaton
Jonathon Cape £25
KATE BEATON is a Canadian writer and cartoonist. The book, Ducks — Two Years in the Oil Sands, is her first full-length graphic narrative, a memoir dramatically played out in cartoon format.
Beaton comes from Cape Breton on Canada’s East Coast, an area where the major industries, oil and fishing, went into sharp decline and as a consequence, local people had to seek employment elsewhere.
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SYLVIA HIKINS relishes Jeanette Winterson’s brilliant hijack of 1001 Nights to push aside the boundaries set by others
Star cartoonist MALC MCGOOKIN finds lessons for today in the punch, and the economy of line, of an extraordinary generation of illustrators