| Book Review Brief Reviews
by Kathryn Thomson
HUGH HOOD`s new short-fiction collection, You`ll Catch Your Death (Porcupine`s Quill, 161 pages, $12.95 paper), is definitely not for the omithophobic, for birds appear everywhere in these stories - on ceilings in Italian cathedrals, in packing crates, in shopping malls, in lonely homes and rural Ontario barns They are not always central to his stories, but they are always there.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Mike Becgs
IT`S THE Summer of Love. Eileen is 19, at odds with her family back in Illinois, and not doing so well with her boyfriend, Nick. He regards her as "one of those women, who reveal themselves in rushing monologues." On the eve of the 1969 American lunar mission, her hippie friends stage a "moonwake" on the Pacific coast that immediately scatters them apart - sending Eileen north to British Columbia, transporting a draft dodger.
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| | Book Review My Tory Transvestite
by Donald Akenson
And how she grew, and grew, and...
SUPPOSE I should have been delighted: in the autumn of1990, a book of mine hit the front pages of eight Canadiandailies. "All crossed up - first female MP poses as a man," declared the MontrealGazette, andothers across the country echoed this story. It concerned my"biography" of John White, a Tory backbencher from 1871 to 1887.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Roger Burford Mason
AMBIVALENCE often attends that poor literary relative, the novella - are we confronting a rambling short story, or a novel without sufficient ambition?
Two novellas by Caterina Edwards do nothing to clear up the ambiguity, and though both have moments in which their form has some validity, in the end, A Whiter Shade Of Pale/Becoming Emma (NeWest, 220 pages, $14.95 paper) would be greatly improved by some judicious pruning.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Gideon Forman
ALBERT LEGAULT and Michel Fortmann, the authors of A Diplomacy of Hope (McGill-Queen`s, 663 pages, $75 cloth, $29.95 paper), call it the first in-depth study of Canadian arms control and disarmament diplomacy. In-depth it most certainly is. Through more than 600 pages of sometimes burdensome detail, the book chronicles every major negotiation in the field from 1945 to 1988.
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| | Book Review Fillingin The Details
by Daniel Jones
ALL NETWORKS of possible meaning must be exhausted,"Julia Kristeva writes in Desire and Language, "before we can understandthat they are ungraspable ... that they are `arbitrary` just like the sign, thename, and the utterance, but also pleasure and jouissance." This quotationbegins Kristjana Gunnars`s second novel, The Substance of Forgetting, awork that explores the ways language, writing, and desire both define andconfuse the meaning of individual existence and one`s sense of self.
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| | Book Review Bic Goes To High School
by Ann Birch
ALTHOUGH our high-school library I subscribes to Booksin Canada, I I discovered that only one of 25 of the senior students I teachhad heard of it. This boy, a musician, remembered purchasing the December 1990issue because of its cover - a rock`n`roll Santa and his back-up reindeer band.
Acting on a suggestion from the editorsof Books in Canada, I asked my seniors to review the magazine.
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| | Book Review At Swim
AsI swim from one end to the other, splashing the water about, in my inimitablestyle, believe me ... alligatorsare always after me. Now - she!
ON THE DAY I was born my mother lifted me up in her arms, admiringly for a moment,then threw me into the winding black-watered creek (not far from the Orinocoand the Amazon) and said, "Swim, you bugger."
I had no choice obviously, my young heartpounding.
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| | Book Review Strugglesfor Power
by Heather Robertson
AS LONG AS women are regarded as an aggrieved minority, lumped in with, as JohnCrosbie so eloquently phrased it, "the coloureds and the cripples,"we are expected to organize into a cohesive political lobby and petition forredress with a unified voice. Yet the role of supplicant is precisely whatwomen are trying to escape, andsince women have as many opinions as men, a false quest for unity leads toexhausting and fruitless squabbles over personalities and ideology.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Becky Liddell
A COMPENDIOUS guide to "the vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, spices, and culinary herbs of our planet," Jon Gregorson`s The Good Earth (Whitecap, 211 pages, $14.95 paper) demonstrates that our favourite foods can be interesting as well as tasty and nutritious. The book is somewhat dry in tone - information is obviously more the aim than entertainment - so it can get boring if much is read at a stretch
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| | Book Review Mandel Remembered
by Douglas Fetherling
Adozen years ago, Eli Mandel`s deathwould have been news, with tributes, public letters, and a standing-room-onlymemorial service. But by the time he succumbed to pneumonia last fall, a seriesof strokes had long since robbed him of the ability to write, and he was prettymuch out of the loop. The FamilyRomance, agathering of essays published in 1986, was his last book. That was a mere sevenyears ago, but long enough for his name to slip into limbo.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Virginia Beaton
FAMILY HISTORY can be a burden - or a source of creative strength, as Roger Burford Mason demonstrates in his second collection, The Beaver Picture & Other Stories (Hounslow, 165 pages, $15.95 paper).
Burford Mason emigrated from England to Canada in 1988, but his family`s transatlantic links date back to early in this century. The connections between the old world and the new seem to fascinate him, and the best stories here are the ones that use a graceful blend of history and fiction.
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| | Book Review Urbanlogos
by Carole Giangrande
FACED with the distressing truths ofracism,poverty, and crime, city dwellers find insight and wisdom in short supply thesedays. Neil Bissoondath`s latest novel, The Innocence of Age, appears to offersome of both. It tells thestory of a father-son conflictthat embodies the clash of old, genteel Torontoand the new multicultural city of cold glitz and destitution.
It`s a good, readable tale, andBissoondath tells it with honesty and sensitivity.
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| | Book Review Hoardto Take
by Alec Mcewen
CACHE FLOW. In an issue of the Writers`Union of Canada`s newsletter, the organization`s chair reported thedisheartening sight of "hoards of fans hustling toward" the TorontoSkyDome to watch overpaid baseball players, instead of spending their moneymore profitably at a nearby book show.
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| | Book Review Looking On Love
by Gordon Lockhead
Barbara Gowdy`s unflinching gaze discerns that which is specifically and authentically human
T`S THE SUMMER of 1992, and Books in Canada has assigned me the rather pleasant task of writing a profile of Barbara Gowdy. Normally it`s difficult to write about someone who`s a personal friend, which Gowdy is
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|  | Silent Words
by Ruby Slipperjack
Fifth House
250 pages $12.95 paper
ISBN: 0920079938
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Book Review Brief Reviews
by Virginia Beaton
THERE ARE FEW things sadder than a child in flight from his own family. But Danny Lynx, the 11 -year-old narrator of Ruby Slipperjack`s novel Silent Words (Fifth House, 250 pages, $12.95 paper) has good reason to hit the road.
Since his mother left home, Danny`s life has been a blend of neglect and abuse. Fearing the brutal beatings of his father, Danny runs away from home, his only hope being that somewhere he will find his mother and be happy again.
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| | Book Review Rewritinghistory
by David Homel
THE MARIGOLDS have been frozen corpse-stiff by an early October snow and a solitarypigeon sits on the head of Tolstoy`s statue, fighting the wintry winds. The19th century chateau on Vorovskogo Street in central Moscow presents the usualgloomy facade that the city itself shows, but inside the building there ispassion. The heat therein is born from a process taking place everywhere in theold Soviet Union.
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| | Book Review Atthe Centre Of Things
by Wayne Grady
WHEN JACK HODGINS set out on a monthlong driveabout through the Australian outbackin the summer of 1989, he didn`t know he was going to write a book about it.
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| | Book Review Leggothy Ego
by Michael Coren
WHEN AN eviscerating review of a novel by H. G. Wellsappeared in the pages of the New Statesman, the portly and petulantauthor woke the magazine`s editor, Kingsley Martin, at dawn by throwing stonesthrough his bedroom window. Wells then wrote to the unfortunate man, beginninghis letter with "Dear Judas Martin" and threatening dire consequences.Wells was a writer of world renown, a successful and wealthy man of letters,but also a crass and vulgar bully.
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| | Book Review Systemsengineers
by I. M. Owen
WE`RE ALL CERTAIN that representative democracy is a Good Thing,and we take it for granted that we have it. In this book, John Laschinger andGeoffrey Stevens, a professional election-campaign manager and a professionalpolitical observer, tell us how the system is actually run these days, andleave us wondering.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Ted Whittaker
WHAT GOOD bathroom/on-the-bus/ibefore sleep reading is the anthology Wild Culture: Ecology and Imagination (Somerville House, 211 pages, $18.95 paper), harvested from the defunct quarterly of the same name by Whitney Smith and Christopher Lowry. (I imply no slur. The Journal of Wild Culture was an agreeably cuddly soft-science mag.) What`s wild here? Not much any more, really, most of the contributors seem to be saying.
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| | Book Review Tracing Perceptions
by Drew Hayden Taylor
WHILE I WAS growing up on the Curve Lake Reserve just north of Peterborough, Ontario, my mother used to work for a rather prosperous family who owned and ran a lucrative arts and crafts business in the village. It catered mostly to tourists and other white people with money to spend, since the majority of local Ojibway people couldn`t afford to buy the bulk of expensive commodities displayed.
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| | Book Review Writing And Sniping
Why is it that most of the 10 letterspublished were those of authors, or friends of authors, or reviewers, nigglingand spatting over material published in your magazine with which they were in some way connected? What are wereaders left to conclude?
That in culling the letters to theeditor, you are trying to make the section imitate life in the insular, cattymilieu of book publishing?
That many of your contributors can`t seemto get it right the first time, leaving Letters to collect the random
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| | Book Review Shadowplays
by Douglas Glover
I ONCE knew a man in New York who worked as a buyer of rare works of art, whichhe collected worldwide, mostly as a tax dodge for wealthy clients who paid lowprices and then donated the works to institutions at inflated paper values. Oneof his clients happened to be a Calgary oil baron who might have been a modelfor the mythically rich, half-blind transvestite millionaire named Jack Deemerwho narrates Robert Kroetsch`s clever new avantgarde novel The Puppeteer.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Ted Whittaker
GEORGE WOODCOCK, at 80, has produced a prescient political statement, his most recent public attempt to salve our national itch. Ina progress of eight sociocultural essays, Power to Us All: Constitution or Social Contract? (Harbour, 191 pages, $14.95 paper) limns a decentralist, confederate stance resolutely opposed to centripetal power politics.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Margaret Dinsdale
WE ALL encounter the medical profession at certain times in our lives, whether it`s for birth, death, broken limbs, or sorting out a painful past. Canadians benefit from a system that has evolved in a unique way, as effectively presented in Canadian Health Care and the State: A Century of Evolution (McGill-Queen`s, 241 pages, $44.95 cloth), edited by C. David Naylor.
The first of eight essays, "Medical Science and Social Criticism," by Colin D. Howell, sets the tone.
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| | Book Review Stricttempo
by Richard Perry
SEPTEMBER,1992, marked the 10th anniversaryof Glenn Gould`s death; had the celebrated pianist not succumbed to cerebralhaemorrhage, the month would have provided the occasion for his 60th birthdayparty.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews
by Laura Byrne Paquet
SHEELAGH CONWAY has provided a fascinating contribution to women`s history with The Faraway Hills Are Green: Voices of Irish Women in Canada (Women`s Press, 336 pages, $18.95 paper).
Conway, who described her own route from Ireland to Canada in A Woman and Catholicism (1987), has drawn moving, richly coloured stories from the 22 Irish immigrants she interviewed.
Most of the stories begin with the subject`s memories of Ireland, then move on to her experiences in Canada.
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| | Book Review Pears Fatten Like Little Buddhas
by Cyril Dabydeen
The ailing one truly dying, with tropical jamun, blacksage, water hyacinths, the village`s houses on stilts foundering...
WHY S VIA PLATH, I didn`t k .1 had taken to her b "" of the man who strutted out and stood before us and brought us Boston, the entire East Coast, in solid phrases. Tufted grass, water whirling, the Atlantic buffeting like a rutting bull. And billows, clouds. He kept on talking, like a confession, about Lowell, Roethke, Sexton, Plath ...
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| | Book Review Yo, Ho, Hum
by George Kaufman
CANADIANS could certainly use a few good laughs these days, and humorists have answered the challenge with some new books aimed at our funny bones. Humour hall of famers such as Leacock and Thurber are safe, but there are some hearty chuckles to be had by turning these pages. Perhaps, though, we live in a world that`s increasingly harder to satirize or parody, since I found a relatively meagre laughs-to-pages-read ratio from this group of fairly well-known writers.
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| | Book Review Best Of The Rest
by Brian Fawcett
A better-late-than-never look at some notable 1992 titles
LAST YEAR`S grab-bag worthy but unreviewed books contained what I thought, and still think, as the most important book published in Canada in 1991 - Linda McQuaig`s The Quick and the Dead: Brian Mulroney, Big Business, and the Seduction of Canada (Penguin). There are some fine books in the bag this year, but none of them quite matches up to McQuaig`s remarkable volume.
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| | Book Review Feathered Barometers
by Ann Diamond
RECENTLY while I was a writer in residence, I spent a couple of days reading D. G. Jones`s classic book on Canadian literature, Butterfly on Rock. Somewhere near the end of his chapter on the modernist poets, I noticed I was crying. Not sobbing, mind you, or even (as far as I was aware) feeling much of anything. In fact, I was having the hardest time merely deciphering the poems. Meanwhile, the tears were shamelessly trickling - presumably due to eye and brain fatigue, or maybe an allergy.
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| | Book Review Dramatically Different
by Ann Jansen
These new stage and screen
offerings play around with all the
stylistic nuances
REVIEWING BOOKS usually has more to do with words than with numbers, but a gathering of recently published Canadian dramas brings up arithmetic: how to divide 1,500 words among 24 plays? Granted, that number includes only four individually published plays, along with an anthology of five screenplays and a collection of 15 stage plays being published for the second time.
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| | Book Review Austere Eloquence
by Douglas Hill
ERNEST LANGFORD`s Rendezvous at Dieppe (Harbour, 170 pages, $14.95 paper) takes for its subject the 1942 military operation that cost Canada so dearly. The novel is straightforward and unembellished; it follows four young men from British Columbia, of disparate ethnic and economic backgrounds, through their training, into battle and finally back - the one who survives - to postwar Canada. A timely and earnest work intended as an anniversary tribute to courage, but not scintillating fiction.
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| | Book Review Roads To Recovery
by Pat Barclay
If you`ve got a problem, we`ve got a book
SO YOU THINK you`ve got problems? Meet Candi McLean, author of Surviving a Nuclear Powered Family (Detselig, 119 pages, $14.95 paper), who writes sage and funny reflections on parenting in whatever passes for her spare time. Somehow, she manages to tell the truth about the raising of small children and still make it sound like something an adult with all his/her marbles would willingly undertake.
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| | Interviews Being On The Left
by David Homel
For France Theoret, personal truths are much more important than political theories
FRANCE THEORET is a veteran of the Quebec writing scene, though she`s only recently come across the linguistic border into English, thanks to two story collections published in 1992: The Tangible Word (Guernica; Barbara Godard, translator) and The Man Who Painted Stalin (Mercury; Luise von Flotow, translator).
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|  | Aska's Birds
by Warabe Aska (Illustrator), David Day
Doubleday
32 pages $18 cloth
ISBN: 0385253885
|  | Purple, Green and Yellow
by Helene Desputeaux (Illustrator), Robert N. Munsch
Annick
32 pages $14.95 cloth
ISBN: 1550372564
|  | The Zoom Trilogy (Common Reader Editions)
by Tim Wynne-Jones, Eric Beddows (Illustrator)
Groundwood/Douglas & McIntyre
36 pages $14.95 cloth
ISBN: 1888173165
| | | Dinosaur Duster
by Donn Kushner, Marc Mongeau (Illustrator)
Lester
32 pages $16.95 cloth
ISBN: 1895555388
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Children's Books Adventures With Colour
by Diane Schoemperlen
When I received this batch of books to review, I knew immediately which would be my seven-year-old son`s favourite. Alexander seized upon Murphy the Rat: Tales of Tough City (Northern Lights/Red Deer College, 32 pages, $14.95 cloth) with unmitigated delight, and his high expectations were amply rewarded
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