Fiction 1

Letters in Canada 1990 This year we welcome T.L. Craig (English, Mount Allison) to the Fiction section. Regrettably, there is no Translation section this year, but it will return next year. This number is the last to appear with David Clandfield as Associate Editor and Mariel O'Neill-Karch as Assistant Editor; their contribution has been extensive and is much appreciated. In their place we shall be welcoming back Ben Shek (French, Toronto) and Graham Falconer (French, Toronto). (AB) Fiction l/T.L.CRAIG The 1990 Governor-General's Award winner for fiction in English, Nino Ricci's Lives of the Saints (Cormorant Books, 238, $12.45 paper), is without doubt a good choice. With a firm control of a child's reminiscing perspective , the novel rests upon strongly developed characterization and a deeply textured representation of its 19605 Apennine village setting. The intensity of both elements is deceptive under the delicate touch of Ricci's style. This delicacy is best seen in the vitality and the energy of detail invested in the characterization, the setting, and the point of view itself.The grand texture of great fiction is well supplied in this style, which balances a high degree of realism with subtle views ofthe moral problemsofthe characters and the community's traditional ways of dealing with them. The double standards of morality and the resultant hypocrisy are themes of the novel, explored in a plot that follows a young mother who becomes pregnant in Italy while her husband is working in Canada. The puzzlement of her young boy, who narrates their story years later as an adult trying to recover some sense and value of the events, is very well handled. While the plot is predictable and the symbolism heavy, the subplots are as delicate as the characteri2ation they contribute to. The boy's juxtaposition of the immaculate conception myth he has learned in church with his mother's surprising pregnancy is well linked to the community of women who 'watched hawk-eyed from their stoops for the slow progress of her disease.' Even better is the gap he recogni2es between the 'Livesofthe Saints' his teacher reads to him and the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 61., NUMBER 1, FALL 1991 20 LEITERS IN CANADA 1990 unsaintly lives of his mother, himself, and his grandfather. The idealism of sainthood crumbles before the simple comparisons of a child. Justice and the saving grace of the divine are seen as myths that barely conceal a society where strict moral conformity produces peripherally immoral acts. This leisurely moving novel follows the awakening to reality of the precocious narrator immersed in a rich stew of community, with all its inherited strengths and weaknesses. A fascinating fiction of old Italian village life, Ricci's novel has much to say that transcends his setting. If it is indeed, as promised, the first novel in a trilogy, there is something valuable to look forward to. If Ricci's novel stands out as the best first novel of the year, Dan Yashinsky's Tales ofan Unknown City (McGill-Queen's University Press, 265, $29.95) should win equal credit for the best first book of stories. In 1978 Yashinsky started a storyteller's forum in a Toronto cafe. Ten years of Friday night 'performances' later, he collected the best of his own and others' stories, tall tales, legends, and anecdotes into this book. Their international provenanceand eclectic range ofsubjects and themes provide a true feast of narratives. There is of course also a range of quality, but the best are very good, while lesser ones are not all that poor. Arguing that Toronto is full of people who want to communicate across cultural lines, Yashinsky states in his 'Host's Tale' that stories 'are how we make an unknowable city knowable, familiar, a proper dwelling place.' Yet it is not the one city as much as the world-city that becomes 'knowable' and 'sharable' in this collection. The stories do work as a multicultural connector, Yiddish folktales sharing space with the wisdom of Hodja Nasrudin, and Ojibway legends alongside Icelandic sagas. However, Yashinsky has chosen very fine and often fascinating stories as well as representative ones...