Bookworm, no. 73
A review of three Christmas ghost stories. Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy on Anh Duong and Ashley Da-Lê Duong’s “Dear Da-Lê.” Poetry by Lea Harper. Inside the December issue.
Ghoul and Yule
The Amethyst Cross: A Ghost Story for Christmas
Mary Fitt
Biblioasis
88 pages, softcover
Captain Dalgety Returns: A Ghost Story for Christmas
Laurence Whistler
Biblioasis
64 pages, softcover
Podolo: A Ghost Story for Christmas
L.P. Hartley
Biblioasis
48 pages, softcover
Over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, the top movie at the box office was a low-budget gorefest about a clown’s murderous rampage. Set during the Christmas season, Terrifier 3 satisfied audiences’ long-standing appetite for ghoul and Yule—one that dates to at least the eighteenth century, when Brits would tell eerie tales on December 24. With its annual Christmas Ghost Stories series, Biblioasis seeks to keep that tradition alive.
Each year, the indie publisher reprints spine-chilling classics in attractive, pocket-sized paperbacks that feature illustrations by the cartoonist Seth. The latest tales were originally written between 1944 and 1952: one about an archivist’s overbearing aunt who rents a cottage in the moorlands, only to disappear days later (The Amethyst Cross); one about a remorseful soldier who, following his death in a thunderstorm, haunts his estranged daughter (Captain Dalgety Returns); and one about a visitor on an obscure Italian island who wants to put a starving cat out of its misery and then discovers something wants to do the same to her (Podolo).
These slim books are tame compared to much contemporary horror. Unlike Terrifier 3, no serial killer sprays a department store Santa with liquid nitrogen before smashing his face with a hammer. But there’s power in that restraint. More goosebump-raising, less gag-inducing, the tales prioritize chilling atmospheres and psychological tensions. Captain Dalgety’s ghost stands “in shadows between the clock and the lowest stair,” silently watching his unsuspecting child. Aunt Dorothea welcomes a strange visitor to her cottage, then finds the chair they used covered in “a thick layer of dust, the accumulated deposit of years and years.” With vivid prose and menacing illustrations, each story can add a delightful tinge of darkness to any booklover’s stocking.
—Alexander Sallas
Writing Home
Dear Da-Lê: A Father’s Memoir of the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution
Anh Duong and Ashley Da-Lê Duong
Douglas & McIntyre
320 pages, softcover and ebook
In 1980, Anh Duong arrived in Calgary as a refugee determined to forget. He grew up during the Vietnam War, in Da-Lê, on the border between the north and south, before escaping to Tehran amid the earliest days of the Iranian Revolution. With Dear Da-Lê, he confronts his traumatic memories and dissects his “long-held burden of silence.”
The narrative offers a comprehensive if starkly dispassionate recollection of his childhood in a war zone. Born in 1953, he survived poverty, violence, and the constant fear of arrest. On his way to school, he walked past the dead bodies of people he knew. He became “a death cheater” when he narrowly escaped a sniper ambush at fourteen. In 1975, he left home to pursue university in Iran; within a few months, Saigon fell to the Communists, rendering him “stateless and familyless.” By 1978, Islamic fundamentalism had escalated in Tehran. It led him to wonder, “Had war and terror kept following me?”
Letters from Duong to his daughter, Ashley, begin each section. In this correspondence, he atones for his mistakes as a parent: “My youth was not easy, but it is not an excuse.” When he arrived in Canada and started a family, he vowed to protect his loved ones by “building a wall around our past.” But in the 2010s, as Ashley protested living conditions at McGill University and began to explore her heritage, he realized that his past was part of her present. In his final letter, he tells her that watching the conflicts in the Middle East and eastern Europe is “like replaying my childhood.” Violence causes harm “not only during wartime, but also for generations after.”
—Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy
Poet’s Corner
Birth Made Us All Mariners
and from these aquatic beginnings,
tadpole to human,
our vestigial gills keep breathing us back
to river, lake, and sea,
water, the first element.
In the flow of time
our lives are quicksilver
carried on unseen currents,
each breath a rising, falling wave.
At the end of our tumultuous days
we’ll surface from the weight of history
to this sun-drunk chalice of lake,
emerge anew.
—Lea Harper is the author of All That Saves Us and Shadow Crossing. Find more of her work in a physical copy of the latest Literary Review of Canada, on newsstands now.
Inside the December Issue
“Nothing much has changed during Francis’s tenure, despite his saying a multitude of things we all wanted to hear — and not just about gay rights. Some might even argue things are worse.” Kelvin Browne reviews Michael W. Higgins’s The Jesuit Disruptor: A Personal Portrait of Pope Francis.
Ruth Panofsky reviews Jo‑Ann Wallace’s posthumous memoir, A Life in Pieces.
Andrew Torry on Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis, by Carolyn Whitzman, and Ending Homelessness in Canada: The Case for Homelessness Prevention, edited by James Hughes.
And much more!