Reflections by René J. Roy is published by Wreckhouse Press Incorporated and available at the Butterfly Book Boutique and at the Port aux Basques Train Museum.
Before I get into this review I’m going to start off by admitting that I once worked for the publisher of this book, and that I consider the author a friend. However, I have a tendency to speak my mind and tell the truth, especially to my friends and especially in this column. It’s what they expect and it’s what I demand, because if I can’t tell you the truth of what I think about a book then there’s no point in even writing a column. So having said all that, let’s get to the book. In a nutshell, I loved it and it had nothing to do with my friend or my ex-employer. It’s a great book, a coffee table book and it’s about the town where I live and work. The photos were simply fantastic and because René took the new ones from pretty much exactly the same spot as the original photo, it’s easy to pick out how much or how little the town has changed. I learned a lot I didn’t know about this town from the captions underneath each one, and it’s always nice to look at pictures of the good old days. There’s a nice story in the book too, written by René’s late father, Gerald Roy, who was French, and a teacher, and how he came to live in Port aux Basques and teach English when he barely spoke the language. Gerald passed last August (he used to write the book review columns) and the book is dedicated to him, but he was a good writer in his own right and it was a nice little story. The book is really well done because it has a coil wire bind, so it lays flat to look at the pictures and you don’t have to fight with it. It’s over 100 pages, nice high gloss and it’s well worth the $18 René is asking for a copy. I told him the only thing wrong with the book was the last page, but that’s just because that’s where his photo is! I’m kidding, of course. I don’t like giving top marks for a book because it’s so rare that I enjoy every part of a book. Usually there’s something wrong to pick out, and I don’t want people to think I gave this rating cause of him being my friend. But that’s not the case at all and this is truly what I think of Reflections.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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