Sandra Beck, the first novel from local writer John Lavery, is a stunning, engrossing experience. It’s good. It’s really good. Really fucking good. I get antsy when I hear John Lavery’s prose described as “surreal” in reviews because that is the element I find missing from so much contemporary Canadian literature. Writing in the hands of someone as talented as Lavery, who grapples intelligently with its potential, can create whole new kinds of emotion out of the raw material of juxtaposed words or striking images. READ MORE