In The English Elegy, Peter Sacks notes that the elegiac mode presents with a “dense matrix,” one composed of techniques such as “the use of repetition and refrain…reiterated questions” and tropes that evoke “the movement from grief to consolation.” David Martin’s nightstead is, both overtly and slantwise, a book-length elegy for his brother Ron, who died by suicide at 23.

According to Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine, a periodical currently soliciting online reviews of Canadian books: “it's not really worth your time to write a negative review. What’s the point? It’ll be more enjoyable for you and for us to write a kind and positive review and it may even facilitate a dialogue with the author you’re reviewing.”

Such rhetoric is prevalent in the reviewing realms and shall I say, brutally simplifies the reason why reviews are written, while indubitably patronizing authors who are deemed to be so ultra-sensitive that they cannot handle a real critique of their work, one balanced between grounded praise and articulate and respectful attention to what might need reassessment.