Category: Reviews

The Vaniers were one of the truly great couples to serve Canada, and this book shows why. Georges Vanier was a military officer in Quebec’s celebrated 22nd Battalion (the Van Doos). He lost a leg fighting in the First World War and this book gives some terrible pictures of that fighting. Later, in Montreal, he met Pauline Archer, a member of another distinguished French-English family. They got married and this double biography gives a most sensitive picture of their radically different temperaments, as well as their religious beliefs and desire to serve – how they complimented each other.

Georges had a number of assignments overseas: working for the British government, for the League of Nations, as Canada’s first Ambassador to France, and finally as the first French Canadian to become Governor General of this country. They, and their five children, had some harrowing times, in particular fleeing Hitler’s troops in France. Vanier supported de Gaulle in his struggle for French Resistance and also tried to save many of the refugees and bring them to Canada.

While Georges ran a very serious, protocol-minded office, his wife was unusually outgoing and vivacious. It made them an ideal couple in a stuffy diplomatic world. The author is very skillful at bringing this out – and also showing what a strong part their Catholic background played. Both had come close to entering the Church, and their son, Jean, was to become the world-known leader of a movement to care for the mentally-handicapped, called L’Arche.

Coady teaches writing at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has written a brilliant book in this Portrait of a Couple.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is a timely novel about the British press, coming as it does in the throes of the Murdoch scandals as well as the folding of the long-time “News of the World.” It’s a hard-hitting story with a surprise ending, quite in keeping with the drama of the whole book.

Annalena McAfee, wife of the renowned writer Ian McEwan, writes about two women journalists, one a distinguished war correspondent with a wide reputation, just turned eighty, and the other a 30-year old correspondent for a weekend entertainment supplement for which she compiles lists of who’s in and who’s out of the news with the emphasis on personal scandals. When the junior writer goes to interview the famous writer, their backgrounds are so different they can hardly talk to each other. The senior woman maintains silence on her personal life but this does not stop the junior from an incredible adventure of spying on her.

Journalists always talk about “putting the paper to bed.” In this book it is their turn. In a rollicking revealing story the junior writer does turn up some shocking background, but this in turn backfires on her own driving ambitions. The whole story is set against the added threat of the Internet usurping the newspapers as this cast has known them and altogether makes for a fascinating read.

Review by Anne McDougall

It is a pleasure to read a book that is gentle and yet fearless in facing the big issues.

Camilla Gibb writes this way in her new novel, “The Beauty of Humanity Movement.” The result is a very successful story set in the new Vietnam – that links personalities from both past and present. Most of us think of the American War in connection with Vietnam. But this country has suffered from a long French oppression as well as a thousand years of Chinese domination. Today it is emerging as a “new Vietnam,” building its own institutions while clinging to part of the past.

Gibb introduces three special personalities to show us this picture. Most endearing is Old Man Hung, who makes the best pho (beef noodle soup) in Hanoi. He is so well-loved that although the police won’t allow him to set up a restaraunt, he wanders with his cart from spot to spot and his clientele follow him bringing their bowls with them. A young, modern Vietnamese is the tour guide, employed at the best hotel to look after tourists, many of them American. There is also the attractive Vietnamese-American woman, now living in the U.S., who turns up with questions about her father’s disappearance during the war. He had been an artist in the Beauty of Humanity Movement that met at Old Man Hung’s restaurant but disappeared when such artists were taken to camps for re-education.

Gibb was born in England and has a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford University. She moved to Toronto where she now lives. Her earlier novel, “Sweetness in the Belly” became a national bestseller, winning prizes. Later novels have been translated into fourteen languages. This one should follow suit.

Review by Anne McDougall

Judi Dench is not only a pleasure to watch acting, but just as rewarding to read in this newest book “And Furthermore.”

It is not the first book about the great actress. There is the 1998 biography by John Miller. But in this volume Dench fills in many of the gaps in her own words and so we get a frank and funny account of what it’s like performing on stage, in a film as well as on television. She does not drop names for the sake of it, but this book is really the story of theatre on both sides of the Atlantic for the last 50 years.

She grew up in a theatre-loving family. Her father, though a general practitioner in York, did a lot of amateur theatricals, as did her mother. Judi considered ballet dancing, as well as theatre design before getting into acting. In 1957 she was asked to play Ophelia with the Old Vic Theatre Company. In 1961 she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company playing with John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft in “The Cherry Orchard.”

She confides much of what she learned along the way. The Old Vic taught her how to be part of a company. She also says: “If you really want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John (Gielgud) and Frank Sinatra will teach you. Because one used to present the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song, without any intrusive extreme emphases.”

Judi Dench went on to give indelible performances in the classics as well as some of the greatest plays and musicals of the 20th century. She is still acting as anyone knows who catches her in the long-running BBC series “As Time Goes By” with Geoffrey Palmer. This book gives a closer picture of the great actress, with the story of her happy marriage to actor Michael Williams, her actress daughter Finty Williams and grandson Sammy. There are many charming photos. The book has no conceit, just a sharp intelligence and endless sense of humour.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is the story of an accident down at the wharf of a First Nations reserve in the Maritimes.

A seventeen year old Indian boy had his first job loading logs on the Dutch cargo shiop “Lutheran.” The load slipped and he was crushed. His white neighbour, also loading that day, is accused of killing him.

David Adams Richards devotes his book to the attitudes and prejudices of the dozens of people involved in this story. The Indian boy, unlike his peers, was heading for university to be a doctor, arousing jealousy among the less-educated boys. The white man, who lived on the very edge of the reserve boundary, had been abandoned by both parents and lived alone. He was known as a hard worker, generally, and quite well-liked by both whites and Indians. After a bitter story, he turns out to be the hero of this tale.

Richards takes us into the lives of a whole variety of types: the wise old chief, the well-meaning but disliked white officials — in a way that no newspaper account can ever give of what happens on the reserves. Richards has earned his reputation for penetrating the hearts and minds of his characters in books like “The Lost Highway,” “The Friends of Meager Fortune” as well as the celebrated “Miramichi Trilogy” and “For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down.” His new book is a fine addition to the list.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is an up-close look at teachers and their pets in a school on the Prairies, followed by the long-lasting effects of these pressures on the next generation in the Ottawa valley.

There is the golden woman teacher, beloved by all her pupils who cannot find love in her own life. Also unforgettable is the 32-year old bachelor, brilliant as teacher and principal, but sadistic and finally defeated by a mental breakdown.

The narrator is the niece of the star woman teacher, Connie Flood. It is up to her to tie in the family relationships, many of them in an Ottawa that we all know. It is a wrenching story altogether and brings in not one but two rapes and murders that come out of the unhealthy relationships developed at the Prairie school. It is a curiously timely moment to be reviewing the book, with world-wide attention on scandals with the head of the International Monetary Fund, as well as the governor of California grabbing the headlines.

Alone in the Classroom has the intuitive, penetrating writing we have come to enjoy with Hay’s earlier books, like Late Nights on Air, and Garbo Laughs. It is a much grimmer tale but Hay does not duck the ramifications and reviews call this her most compelling novel yet.

Review by Anne McDougall

A long drink of cool water is what you crave when reading Dianne Warren’s new book.

Suitably titled “Cool Water” the novel is set in the dusty sand dunes of Juliet, Saskatchewan. There is beauty as well as loneliness in the oasis on the edge of Little Snake Sand Hills. Warren lives in Regina, Saskatchewan and she has captured the mood of the Prairie people. Their day-to-day lives are a far cry from the life in Ottawa.

For one thing, there are lots of horses, including one that escapes his trailer and the adventures getting him back to his owner. The people are unassuming and matter-of-fact but they have hang-ups we all recognize and Warren describes them in a warm-hearted and witty way. There is the man afraid to take responsibility for the farm his adoptive parents left him; the shy middle-aged couple unable to acknowledge their feelings for one another.

Dianne Warren is the author of three books of short fiction and three plays. She has won the Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year, the Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in mid-career, and has been shortlisted for a Governor-General’s Award for Drama in l992.

Review by Anne McDougall

Alexander McCall Smith has written another story about Precious Ramotse, the legendary Lady Detective of Botswana, and perhaps the most beloved of the many characters he has created.

As we all know by now, McCall Smith is author of the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, the 44 Scotland Street series and the Corduroy Mansions series. The secret to his success may lie in the fact that he keeps each series close to home. His people don’t travel far. We get an intimate picture of their day-to-day lives, walking to work, seeing their friends for a tea or coffee, with the occasional irregular happening which of course makes the story. In the case of the No. l Ladies Detective Agency series, we get vivid pictures of the sun setting over the Kalahari and Mma Ramotse sitting beneath an old acacia tree – at all times of day. McCall Smith used to live in Africa and is now attached to the University of Edinburgh -both settings he knows well.

In this one, Mma Ramotse is preoccupied in getting her sharp-tongued Assistant safely married. But the detective cases still come in, including quite a violent one involving the killing of some cattle in a remote cattle post. Precious is well-loved and trusted and her method of solving crimes is to get everyone involved talking to her. McCall Smith is professor emeritus of medical law and has served on many national and international organizations concerned with bio-ethics. His books reflect his interest. Rather than stick to superficial emotions he tells a real story that deeply touches the human heart. This is one of them.

Review by Anne McDougall

Susan Juby has concocted some far-out misfits for her new novel. But they are funny and they do grab your attention and finally your affection.

The story circles around a 20-year old American girl, living in New York and tired of her publishing job and longing to somehow “get back to the land”. Out of the blue she gets her dream when an uncle in Canada leaves her an inheritance of 30 acres of farmland on Vancouver Island. On checking out her new land, Prudence finds an assortment of neighbours that seem to come with the deal. There is a retired foreman, living in a cabin, doing odd jobs and playing the guitar. An alcoholic drop-out highschooler, hiding from a mild scandal with his drama teacher, comes from the house across the road and asks for work. Finally, an eleven year old girl, with a collection of prize-winning chickens, begs to join in and get away from her parents.

Prudence finds the so-called farm is growing almost nothing, and the bank is threatening to close it down. The book tells of the extraordinary measures all these people take to help keep it going. The last proves quite thrilling when the guitar-player turns out to have a world-famous brother in the music business and the ensuing concert brings in the entire neighbourhood and – we are quite sure – saves the farm.

Susan Juby lives with her husband on Vancouver Island and gets a good feeling about the beautiful and often gently eccentric place. She has written a number of novels, including the best-selling Alice series.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is one of the most successful books in the Extraordinary Canadians series.

Dr. Vincent Lam, emergency physician and author of the prize-winning “Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures”, takes on the biography of the legendary Tommy Douglas, leader of the CCF government in Saskatchewan and responsible for introducing medicare legislation in that province that eventually spread to the whole of Canada.

Dr. Lam gives a sympathetic portrait of the young Scottish boy immigrating with his family to Winnipeg, l9ll, and later l9l9, their involvement in the Great Depression and Winnipeg General Strike, Tommy’s career as a Baptist minister in Weyburn, Saskatchewan and eventual involvement in politics as a more practical way to fix what he considered a broken and unjust economic system. He had already shown his willingness to fight, winning the lightweight boxing championship of Manitoba in l923. Perhaps more significantly, he had suffered as a boy from recurrent osteomyelitis in his right leg and was only saved from amputation when a renowned orthopedic surgeon offered to operate at no cost as a teaching case. He recovered but never forgot what the care meant to him.

In l932 J.C. Woodsworth, who founded the CCF party, introduced Douglas to M. J. Caldwell,the labour leader. In l935 Douglas ran as a CCF candidate in the federal election and won a seat for Weyburn, Saskatchewan. In l942 he became leader of the Saskatchewan CCF and in years after that introduced socialist measures in a prudently run mixed economy, e.g. universal hospital insurance, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the rural electrification program.

Douglas own career took him to the leadership of the new NDP party in l96l. It was not until l964 that the Hall Commission recommended the adoption of universal medical care modelled on Saskatchewan’s plan.

Dr. Lam introduces Douglas’ family, his wife Irma, actress daughter Shirley and later adopted daughter Joan. Tommy Douglas retired as leader of the NDP in l97l and spent the rest of his life in Ottawa and a cottage in Wakefield, Quebec.

It is not hard to see why this feisty Scot was once named the most important Canadian of all time. He never gave up on his care for other people – and we all know that.

Review by Anne McDougall