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book review

Darwin's Moving

By Taylor Lambert

NeWest Press, 152 pages, $19.95

Maybe you didn't think you wanted to read a book about a small moving company in Calgary, but isn't it odd, considering how pervasive movers are and the nature of their work, that almost nothing is written about them in Canada? Taylor Lambert has worked for Darwin's Moving & Deliveries for nearly a decade. Like everyone else at the company, it's work he drifted into. Part of this book's appeal is the fascination in understanding the art of a thing. What makes the best mover? And why is it the best mover Lambert knows is an unreliable, sometimes violent man familiar with the swings of addiction? Lambert is particularly attentive to his subjects' limited life choices and paints them as complex people, without condoning their actions. One area that warrants further examination is the way in which these lives intersect with white supremacy, because Lambert names this. Darwin's Moving is about Calgary but it's a larger story, too, about the ways Darwin's Moving is not unique, about class and the often-transient men tasked with moving our homes.

Michael Redhill has won the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel 'Bellevue Square,' about a woman on the hunt for her doppelganger. The Toronto author says it would have been foolish to imagine he could win the award.

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