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Book Reviews in February 1995 Issue

Note from Editor
Note from the Editor
by Paul Stuewe
Since 1995 looks to be the year when Internet connections and CD-ROM drives become standard household fixtures, we've decided to devote our March issue to the theme of `Writing on the Information Highway.'
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On the Take Crime Corruption & Greed in the Mulroney Years
by Stevie Cameron,

512 pages $0 TP
ISBN: 0614038510
Lost in North America The Imaginary Canadian in the American Dream
by John Gray,

208 pages $17.95 TP
ISBN: 0889223505
The Klein Revolution
by Mark Lisac,

245 pages $19.95 PT
ISBN: 0920897835
Book Review
The Mulroney Legacy
by Brian Fawcett
Every decent citizen left in this country ought to buy or borrow this book, read it cover to cover, and then have a long cold look in the political and moral mirror. It will, I warn, be a sobering, and quite possibly embarrassing experience.
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Despair And Other Stories of Ottawa
by Andre Alexis,

232 pages $14.99 TP
ISBN: 0771006667
Coming Attractions 94
by D. Glover, M. Helwig,

pages $27.95 TC
ISBN: 0887509754
A Litany in Time of Plague
by K. D. Miller,

160 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0889841454
Passion Fruit Tea
by Eleonore Schonmaier,

pages $12 TP
ISBN: 0969840705
Snow over Judaea
by Kenneth Radu,

212 pages $13.95 TP
ISBN: 1550650564
Book Review
Approaching Epiphany
by Kevin Connolly
Despair is the most accomplished and original first book of stories by a young Canadian writer to come along in quite some time.
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The Trickster
by Jean-Francois Lisee,

400 pages $24.95 TP
ISBN: 1550284665
Book Review
Up to No Good
by David Homel
What's missing in this English version is Bourassa himself, the central enigma of the story, Lisee's despicable clown. Perhaps he got lost in the abridgement.
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Invisible Man at the Window
by Monique Proulx, Matt Cohen,

160 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 1550541714
Book Review
All about Love
by Eileen Manion
Almost to the end of the novel, Monique Proulx maintains some of the suspense she builds up concerning the interrelationships of her characters. I read it with the intense commitment and absorption of a whodunit.
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Empire of the Soul Some Journeys in India
by Paul W. Roberts,

400 pages $29.95 CT
ISBN: 0773727388
Book Review
The Art of Pilgrimage
by Allan Casey
Paul Roberts's unflinchingly brave cross-examination of India's elite and the humanist rapport he establishes with the country's average citizens makes for a penetrating portrait of this often shadowy soul empire.
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Patient No More The Politics of Breast Cancer
by Sharon Batt,

432 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 0921881304
Picasso's Woman A Breast Cancer Story
by Rosalind Macphee,

224 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 1550541587
Book Review
Demands for Treatment
by Ellen Roseman
Women are writing diaries, memoirs, and autobiographical accounts of dealing with breat cancer, the debilitating treatments, and the sometimes helpful, sometimes horrified reactions of family and friends.
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Bread Out of Stone Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics
by Dionne Brand,

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
pages $14.95 PT
ISBN: 0889104921
Book Review
Love Which is Insight
by George Elliott Clarke
Her voice -- succinct, lyrically accented, love-and anger-tinted -- seeps too deeply inside the flesh to allow anyone the luxury of forgetfulness.
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Karla's Web A Cultural Investigation of the Mahaffy-French Murders
by Frank Davey,

Viking Penguin
pages $22.95 TP
ISBN: 0670861537
Book Review
A Canaidan Way of Death
by Fraser Sutherland
In Davey's view, disingenuous media latched on to a Gothic plot -- monstrous villains, martyred virgins -- to tell a story. Davey also relates this to a supposedly systemic misogyny in society that turns men to anger and women to self-hatred.
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Burden of Dreams
by Anne Hebert, Sheila Fischman,

166 pages $22.95 CT
ISBN: 088784166X
Book Review
A Choice of Lovers
by Anne Denoon
The book's structure is deceptively simple: in present tense throughout and organized in brief vignettes, it evokes both the immediacy of dreams and the disorder of memory, without obstructing the inexorable progress of the narrative.
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Conor A Biography of Conor Cruise O'Brien
by Donald H. Akenson,

599 pages $44.95 TC
ISBN: 0773512551
Conor A Biography of Conor Cruise O'Brien
by Donald H. Akenson,

350 pages $44.95 TC
ISBN: 077351256X
Book Review
An Irish Iconoclast
by C Fox
It's interesting to imagine what might have happened on the volatile Quebec scene of the 1970s if that gadfly Conor Cruise O'Brien had seized the opportunity offered to him in 1969 to head what was then Sir George Williams University in Montreal.
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Her Mother's Ashes
by Nurjehan Aziz,

0 pages $15.95 TP
ISBN: 0920661408
Without a Guide Contemporary Women's Travel Adventures
by Katherine Govier,

256 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 0921912757
Book Review
Home and Away
by Libby Scheier
Another thread running through many of the stories is the traditional -- and oppressive -- situation of Southeast Asian women in their own cultures.
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Arctic Artist The Journal & Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819-1822
by C. Stuart Houston, I. S. MacLaren,

392 pages $49.95 TC
ISBN: 0773511814
Victorian Explorer The African Diaries of Captain William G. Stairs
284 pages $17.95
ISBN: 1551091038
Book Review
When Faith Was in Favour
by Dennison Berwick
Providence is out of favour at the moment, but there was a time, especially in the 19th century, when Europeans unquestioningly believed in a divine grace directing the events of their lives.
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Gotcha! How the Media Distorts the News
by George Bain,

256 pages $26.95 CT
ISBN: 1550135554
Book Review
Mixing Up the Message
by Allan Levine
Canadian editors and journalists clearly have a lot to answer for. But will this book or any other significant commentary make a difference? Bain is not overly optimistic, and rightly so.
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Interviews
Detecting the Truth
by Nancy Wigston
The award-winning biographer Phyllis Grosskurth's latest project has her romantically involved with Lord Byron.
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Letters to Editor
Letters to the Editor
Philosophically, I agree with Givner that contests should encourage new writers and the fees shouldn't be so high as to prevent writers submitting.
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Discerner of Hearts And Other Stories
by Olive Senior,

224 pages $18.99 TP
ISBN: 0771080530
Prose/Poetry
The Glass-Bottom Boat
by Olive Senior
He sat in his chair in the little living room from which he could look directly at her in the bedroom and, watching her, he wondered at all her busyness nowadays with pots and jars and lotions when so little result was obtained.
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Prose/Poetry
The Line
by Dana Tierny
This year's judges awarded the first-place prize of $2,500 to "The Line," a short-fiction piece by Dana P. Tierney. Books in Canada is pleased to publish the winning entry.
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Profiles
Closer to Home
by John Degen
Olive Senior's detailed evocations of place are intended for everyone.
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Grammar Girl
Laying Down the Law
by Rose Thorne
There's no stopping a word when it wants to change its meaning, and 'peculiar' has been overpowered by its own peculiarity.
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Up Front
Up Front - Under the Influence
by Barbara Carey
I'll continue to be interested in knowing admired authors' favourite books, past and present, but just out of curiosity. How a writer's imagination is shaped is, finally, mysterious.
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Opinion
Juries on Trial
by Elisabeth Harvor
The Governor General's Awards in particular seem to symbolize a sort of parental approval. Perhaps this is why the decisions of GG jurors arouse such intense outrage.
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The Monkey Puzzle Tree
by Elizabeth Nickson,

256 pages $27 TC
ISBN: 0394280687
The Ocean Tree
by David Andrus,

184 pages $34.95 TC
ISBN: 0887509673
Sweet Grass
by Andy Juniper,

169 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0889625751
Beneath the Faceless Mountain
by Roberta Rees,

240 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0889951063
Walk Good Guyana Boy
224 pages $15.9
ISBN: 0969772025
First Novels
First Novels - Drawing the Lines
by Maureen Garvie
All of this issue's books tend to give rise to speculations on the boundaries between life and fiction, and the point at which the writer has chosen to draw the line.
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Beds & Consenting Dreamers
by Joe Rosenblatt,

88 pages $11.95 PT
ISBN: 0889821259
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Bruce Whiteman
Inventive this writing is, I suppose, and its satirical edge is clear. But a whole book of it is too much. Rosenblatt is one of our most eccentric poets, and bless him for it.
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Night Physics
by M. Travis Lane,

pages $11.95 TP
ISBN: 091962670X
Mahoning
by A. F. Moritz,

pages $11.95 TP
ISBN: 0919626734
Iodine: or A Visit to Jake's Kero Confectionery During the Elks' Rodeo Parade, 1963
by Harold Rhenisch,

90 pages $12 TC
ISBN: 0919897401
Kilmarnock
by Tony Cosier,

pages $12.95 PT
ISBN: 0921254644
Angel Wings All Over
by Anne Campbell,

80 pages $11 TP
ISBN: 1895449243
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Tim Bowling
Most readers of poetry understand instinctively that the highest achievements in the genre are reached when emotion meets craft, when something worth saying is said in a memorable way.
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Near Death
by Nancy Kilpatrick, Rebecca Todd,

304 pages $6.99 MM
ISBN: 067188090X
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by George Kaufman
In spite of the fact that the climactic showdown is a bit of a letdown, actionwise, by the end of this crazy, violent journey across North America, most members of the modem vampire-tale cult should find that their lust for blood has been sated.
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Nehanda
by Yvonne Vera,

pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0920661416
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Hazelle Palmer
This is a beautifully written novel. Vera's poetic, mystical style carries you from the Africans' passionate fight to the strangers' mannered ambivalence.
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On the Safe Edge
by Dale J. Trevor,

pages $24.95 TP
ISBN: 1895857058
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by R Vaughan
Ultimately, 'On the Safe Edge' is the publishing equivalent of decriminalization. It will lead to a better understanding and acceptance of SM fans and fetishists. It may save lives.
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Poisoned Chalice The Last Campaign of the Progressive Conservative Party?
by David McLaughlin,

322 pages $29.99 TC
ISBN: 1550022202
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by William Christian
Can the Tories recover from Kim Campbell? Only, David McLaughlin says in this elegant and well-crafted book, if they can persuade voters that there is some reason for the party's continued existence.
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A Writer's Life
by Scott Young,

256 pages $28.95 TC
ISBN: 0385254695
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by John Parr
A Writer's Life is an enjoyable, often Dickensian account of a lost boyhood, both sad and hilarious.
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Rosalie's Catastrophes
by Ginette Anfousse,

Demco Media
pages $8.7 TC
ISBN: 060609797X
School Stinks
by Frank O'Keefe,

132 pages $5.95 TP
ISBN: 077367294X
The Man Who Created Narnia The Story of C. S. Lewis
by Michael Coren,

William B.\Eerdmans#Publishing Company
151 pages $22 TC
ISBN: 0802838227
A Prairie Year
by Jo Bannatyne-Cugnet, Yvette Moore,

32 pages $16.95 TC
ISBN: 0887763340
Starshine at Camp Crescent Moon
by Ellen Schwartz,

160 pages $8.95 TP
ISBN: 0919591027
Dragon in the Clouds
by Rosemary Nelson,

160 pages $6.95 TP
ISBN: 0929141229
A Light in Space
by Wendy Orr, Ruth Ohi, Ruth Ohi,

124 pages $14.95 LB
ISBN: 1550373684
A Pioneer Story The Daily Life of a Canadian Family in 1840
by Barbara Greenwood, Heather Collins,

240 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 1550741284
Witches, Ghosts & Loups-Garous
by Joan Finnigan,

pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 1550820869
Children's Books
Children's Books - The Lion, the Alien, and the Pioneers
by Allison Sutherland
A sound biography of a great children's writer. A rising SF star. A tasty slice of Quebecois life. And a fine book of do-it-yourself pioneering. Four for the read.
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At Large
At Large - Who Stole Reviewing?
by Michael Coren
What this feminist author does is to tear away at the foundations of victimology, that chimera upon which the entire industries of fraudulent statistics, false accusations, and radical political agendas are so frequently based.
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Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - A Forum for Interviews
by Douglas Fetherling
As an interviewer, Kirkwood has a wonderfully quirky style, and 'Between the Lines' is generally a delight to read, despite some editing errors.
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