A City with a Difference: The Rise and Fall of the Montreal Citizen's Movement by T.L. Thomas (review)

576 LEITERS IN CANADA 1997 revisionists. Revealing the performed and performative nature of the subject through their doubling strategies, these fairy-tale revisions further define themselves as postmodem by their self-awareness; the task they perform is also staged, in an inherently self-relativising gesture. Without proposing the entire project anew, Bacchilega contributes another concise statement to that intersection of charters which is feminist postmodem revisionist strategies. It is through supremely informed, energetic, and clear close readings that the book achieves its argument, juxtaposing the works of renowned revisionists like Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, and Donald Barthelme with examples from television, film, and musicals. But even in her analysis of Atwood's and Carter's fairy-tale treatments, Bacchilega avoids staid summary of the already extensive critical conversation. Nor is she squeamish about taking on the sideline debate in Carter criticism arising from that author's frequent, perhaps ambiguous, reproduction of pornography. Although Bacchilega has not aimed here to produce a postrrtodern typology, one of the interesting directions this work does take is in distinguishing between 'repetition' and 'opposition' in retellings, and pointing to a 'generic tension'between the two. Her analysis thus points the way for some finer distinctions among revisionist works. It is possible for an intertextual work to reflect- without reflecting upon- the fairy-tale intertext. Naming fictions of opposition Jpostmodern' is perhaps one way of indicating a disenchantment with generic assumptions ofrevisionism in intertextual engagements. In this way, Bacchilega's own work exemplifies the strategies which are her subject matter. (CASIE HERMANSSON) T.L. Thomas. A City with a Difference: The Rise and Fall ofthe Montreal Citizen's Movement Vehicule Press. x 214. $18.oo In the first sentence of this book, we are told it has its origins in a doctoral thesis. Within a few pages itbecomes clear that ithas not moved far beyond its origins. It never loses the character of an exercise in which the author's chief concern is to demonstrate his grasp of the theory of party formation and development. Unfortunately, only one theory is examined at length. The general reader, or even the specialist unfamiliar with Montreal's local politics looking for an understandable account of the Montreal Citizen's Movement (McM), cannot find it here. The central question examined is whether the MCM fits the model of a left-libertarian party, developed by Herbert Kitschelt in his work on European politics. The author comes to a generally positive conclusion. This is hardly surprising, since he has a strictly limited interest in looking HUMANITIES 577 at the MCM from any other perspective. If you are not deeply committed to testing Kitschelt's theories, this is not the book for you. The author's dependence on the model dominates virtually all the questions he poses in the book. There are, of course, lots of other possible approaches to assessing the MCM. There are several with more potential for our understanding of Montreal City politics than this one, in my view. One might have hoped, and expected, that in trying to serve his main purpose, the author would have provided a sufficiently detailed and coherent account to allow those less impressed by Kitschelt's theoretic insights to examine their own alternative hypotheses. In fact there are few facts relevant to the structure, membership, finance or electoral support of the MCM to be fotmd. Even the basic steps in the evolution of the party are not clearly described. I am amazed that I could come away from a book on a Montreal City party without a picture of the balance between English- and French-speaking members. If one approaches the MCM from the comparative city politics perspective, there is much about it which is familiar. I came to the tentative conclusion that it is probably best viewed as a variant of the North American city reform movement, stimulated by objections to the rule of an entrenched narrow oligarchy. Like so many similar movements in the past century, it had a diverse group of supporters. They were united in their opposition to the prevailing powers/ but had little internal coherence or grasp of the realities of electoral politics. The accession to power...