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Book Reviews in May 1997 Issue

Book Review
Ghost Baskeball
by Michael Greenstein
Quietly prolific, Matt Cohen writes interesting, but occasionally flawed fiction. If his short stories lack the mastery of Alice Munro's or Mavis Gallant's, his novels fall short of Hemingway's or Updike's virtuoso performances (cited in Last Seen as last
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New Age Thinking A Psychoanalytic Critque
360 pages $48
ISBN: 077660421X
Book Review
Psychoanlysis, Culture, & New Age
by Charles Levin
"I haven't been pussyfooting around for the last five chapters. I've been writing psychoanalytic critique."-M. D. Faber, New Age Thinking "With some minds, truth is, in effect, not so cruel a thing after all, seeing that,
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Dobryd
170 pages $16.95
ISBN: 1550544381
Book Review
Opening the Barn Door
by Mary Soderstorm
Recently, during a time when I was much haunted by the faces of today's children of war, I re-read Ann Charney's novel Dobryd. Like those under-nourished living ghosts of Bosnia, Tadzhikistan, and Rwanda, she spent the first part of her life in peril.
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Deeds/Abstracts
by Greg Curnoe,

200 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 0919626785
An Acre of Time The Enduring Value of Place
256 pages $29.95
ISBN: 1551990024
Book Review
Cultiver son Arpent de Neige
by Bert Archer
The relationship of writing to the land on which it is written, and the pursuant questions relating to the existence and nature of national or regional literatures, are mostly the stuff of theory. Is there such a thing as an English literature?
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Book Review
The Best Worst Hurricane Shelter
by Kildare Dobbs
The Manleys of Jamaica were leaders in the emergence of new nations in the Caribbean, Norman for a free federation of the British West Indies, his son Michael for a socialist Jamaica. Rachel Manley, a poet who lives in Canada,
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Lord High Executiner An Unashamed Look at Hangemen, Headsmen, & Their Kind
256 pages $29.95
ISBN: 1550137042
Book Review
Functions Particularly Vital!
by George Jonas
After many agreeable books of fiction, Howard Engel (known as "Howie" to co-workers and friends) has written an agreeable book of non-fiction. The subject, as evident from the title, is the people who put other people to death.
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A Random Gospel
103 pages $27.95
ISBN: 0778010252
Book Review
A Modern Bibliomancer
by Tim Bowling
Few people ever remark about a new book of poems, "It's a real page-turner, I couldn't put it down." No doubt this says a great deal about contemporary reading preferences. (Poetry is the poor sister of the written arts,
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Shadow Weather/Poems Selected & New
135 pages $14.95
ISBN: 1550390686
Book Review
Inside Outdoors
by Eric Ormsby
Charles Lillard writes with great exuberance about the forests and rivers and the inhabitants of the Northwest Coast, but despite its bluff, outdoorsy exterior, this is a recondite book. He writes for a select few.
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The Tailor of Panama
340 pages $32.99
ISBN: 0670873438
Book Review
Tailor Provocateur
by Hugh Graham
Imagine that you are the United States. You have agreed to return the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. But in the post-Cold-War world with a wide-open market, with hordes of oil tankers squeezing back and forth through the isthmus, you have come
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Book Review
If He Were Him
by I. M. Owen
Clark Blaise was well-established as a short-story writer before he published a novel. Brevity suits him; and his new novel is actually a novella, consisting of a prologue, an epilogue, and eight brief stories, two of them narrated in the first person.
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The Witch of Exmoor
288 pages $29.99
ISBN: 077102875X
Book Review
Another Lament for the Pretence of Fiction
by Judith Walker
"Begin on a midsummer evening. Let them have everything that is pleasant." With these words the narrator of Margaret Drabble's latest novel sets up the characters that will be moved relentlessly around the chessboard plot. Some characters,
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Book Review
An Exasperating Humanist
by Michael Fitz-James
Whatever one's position on "women's reproductive rights", no-one can deny Henry Morgentaler's monumental impact on Canadian law and medicine. His efforts to ensure that women have access to safe and legal abortions have been going on almost
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Sex in the Snow Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium
234 pages $27.99
ISBN: 0670871737
The Decline of Deference Canadian Values in Cross-National Perspective
360 pages $26.95
ISBN: 1551110318
Book Review
3SC vs. WVS
by Ian Coutts
Canadians today are a cranky lot. We vote against the Charlottetown accord, we're rude to the prime minister on TV, in Toronto they ban smoking but everyone goes right on doing it. Have we really turned from being a nation of docile sheep into being
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Laughing on the Outside The Life of John Candy
243 pages $29.95
ISBN: 0670870277
Book Review
Lucky to Get That Far
by Harold Fiske
In early 1994, the comedian John Candy died of a heart attack in his sleep in Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, a movie everybody agrees was a turkey in the raw. It was no surprise that Candy kicked the bucket-he was a whale of a guy,
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Book Review
Schools Beset on Left & Right
by Dan Gardner
After a six-month deluge of editorials and articles on education-are standards dropping? are the kids illiterate?-Globe & Mail readers were presented with the best evidence of the state of education in January. They may not have recognized it for what
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Liberal Education & Value Relativism A Guide to Today's B.A.
105 pages $39
ISBN: 0761803378
Book Review
Undergrads: Beware, Don't Despair
by Leon Craig
"Learning is the comprehensive engagement in which we come to know ourselves and the world around us. It is a paradoxical activity: it is doing and submitting at the same time. And its achievements range from being merely aware, to what may be called
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Who Killed Confederation Life? The Inside Story
320 pages $29.99
ISBN: 0771056311
Book Review
Death of Life
by Ellen Roseman
Confederation Life was Canada's fourth largest insurance company, with $19-billion in assets, when it was seized by regulators in August 1994. While Mr. McQueen, a seasoned business journalist with the Financial Post, calls his tale a whodunnit,
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Origin of Waves
by Austin Clarke,

pages $19.99 TC
ISBN: 0771021275
The Austin Clarke Reader
351 pages $24.95
ISBN: 1550960350
Book Review
Only the Language Laughs
by Ted Whittaker
Near the end of a 1966 essay reprinted in this reader ("Harrison College and Me"), Austin Clarke admits that, for him, his youthful achievements could not validly be collectively recognizable. "I understand now.why I did compete in individual sports.
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Interviews
Say It in Elephant - Kim Echlin interviewed by Eva Tihanyi
by Eva Tihanyi
Kim Echlin was born in 1955 in Burlington, Ontario, but currently lives in Toronto. She has studied French at the Sorbonne, completed a doctoral thesis on Ojibway story-telling, travelled extensively through the Marshall Islands, China, France,
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Cameron & Me
by Dorothy J. Harris, Marilyn Mets,

32 pages $16.95 TC
ISBN: 0773730044
Interviews
Story Intact - Frieda Wishinsky speaks with Joan Harris & Marilyn Mets
by Frieda Wishinsky
It's a magical process. A writer has an idea. She develops it into a story. A publisher likes the story and finds an illustrator. The illustrator reads the story and translates the words into visual images. Each person in the process brings her own
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Letters to Editor
To the Editor
Not Exactly a Beast In my review of Alice Munro's Selected Stories (December), I describe a character in the story "Vandals" as a "destructive beast". Professor Gerald Noonan (of Wilfrid Laurier University) has brought
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A Scientific Romance A Novel
by Ronald Wright,

309 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 0676970567
First Novels
First Novels - The Cure for Mad Cow?
by Eva Tihanyi
Knopf Canada kicks off its 1997 "New Face of Fiction" campaign with A Scientific Romance (312 pages, $29.95 cloth), by Ronald Wright, among whose previous works are five acclaimed travel books. The title is a Victorian term for speculative
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The Illuminated Manuscript A Novel
by Ruth Moffat,

400 pages $24.95 TP
ISBN: 1551280361
First Novels
First Novels - The Cure for Mad Cow?
by Eva Tihanyi
In The Illuminated Manuscript (Mercury Press, 384 pages, $24.95 paper), Ruth Moffatt travels in the opposite direction: into the past, but with some very interesting twists along the way. The most striking feature of this novel is its form.
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My Darling Dead Ones
by Erika De Vasconcelos,

224 pages $26.95 TC
ISBN: 0676970540
First Novels
First Novels - The Cure for Mad Cow?
by Eva Tihanyi
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for My Darling Dead Ones (Knopf Canada, 196 pages, $26.95 cloth), by Erika de Vasconcelos. This, too, is a multi-generational novel about women and their relationships, primarily to one another.
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Keel Kissing Bottom
by Elizabeth De Freitas,

256 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 0679309225
First Novels
First Novels - The Cure for Mad Cow?
by Eva Tihanyi
Keel Kissing Bottom (Random House, 252 pages, $27.95 cloth), by Elizabeth de Freitas, is a quirky, surreal, selfconscious work, redeemed only by the author's talent with language. First, the preposterous story line: Mary Seeburth,
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To Dance at the Palais Royale
by Janet McNaughton,

220 pages $6.99 TP
ISBN: 077367473X
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
Good historical fiction re-creates for the reader a real sense of a particular time and place. It's often a question of striking just the right tone rather than blitzing the reader with an overwhelming litany of historical facts and details.

And
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Jess & the Runaway Grandpa
by Mary Woodbury,

208 pages $6.95 TP
ISBN: 1550501135
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Don Aker
"Ruth is my wife. She likes sugar in her coffee but not in tea. Shave every day." These simple instructions recorded in a file marked "Disease" capture succinctly the tragedy of Alzheimer's, the disorder that afflicts Ernie Mather in Mary Woodbury's novel
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Simon Finds a Treasure
by Gilles Tibo, Gilles Tibo,

pages $10.99 TC
ISBN: 0887763766
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Welwyn Katz
My favourite picture-book of all time is Simon & the Wind. The writing in it awes me. In that little book, Tibo manages to define, for me at least, one of the most important aspects of the human condition. In 270 words, more or less, he does what
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Steel Drums & Ice Skates
by Dirk McLean, Ho Che-Anderson,

pages $13.95 TC
ISBN: 0888992580
Roses for Gita
by Rachna Gilmore, Alice Priestley,

24 pages $5.95 MM
ISBN: 0929005856
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Gillian Chan
From personal experience, I know what a major upheaval immigrating to a new country can be: exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. It's hard to imagine what children must feel when faced with this, especially when they do not always understand all
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Maddie in Hospital
by Louise Leblanc, Sarah Cummins,

64 pages $5.95 MM
ISBN: 0887803741
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Allison Sutherland
Ask any adult what comic books they used to read as a child, and you get a slightly sheepish smile of remembered, mildly illicit pleasure. Uncle Scrooge McDuck. Archie Veronica. Superboy. And of course a Classic Comic or two. A Tale of Two Cities...
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Good for You, Mikey Mite!
by Gilles Gauthier, Sarah Cummins,

64 pages $5.95 MM
ISBN: 0887803709
Fred & the Stinky Cheese
by Marie-Danielle Crotean, Sarah Cummins,

64 pages $5.95 MM
ISBN: 0887803725
Maddie in Hospital
by Louise Leblanc, Sarah Cummins,

64 pages $5.95 MM
ISBN: 0887803741
Max the Superhero
by Sylvain Trudel,

64 pages $5.95 MM
ISBN: 0887803768
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Diana Halfpenny
When the first novels published by Les éditions la courte échelle are translated into English, they are put out by Formac Publishing Company Ltd. Coupled with the vast quantities of these books available, this name suggests formulaic writing, stereotype
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At Large
At Large - White Mischief
by Michael Coren
Perhaps the most successful and laudable international political campaign since the Second World War was the one launched by the free world to end apartheid in South Africa. A combination of economic boycotts, physical isolation,
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Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - Byron: Manic Celeb
by Douglas Fetherling
Almost a century and a quarter after his death by fever (at Missolonghi in Greece, while symbolically helping the local insurgents fight the Turks), Lord Byron remains a figure of controversy and disgust. The fact that a new biography,
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First Novel Award
Student Writing Awards 1996-1997
The winners of the Books in Canada Student Writing Awards are as follows: 1st place university/college undergraduate level: "Clever" by Rachel Li Wai Suen (York University); 2nd place university/college undergraduate level:
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