Comedy is almost as cruel and exclusive as tragedy.
Through a process of self-analysis that has been both painful and joyous, his life has provided him with the raw material for what he writes. Interwoven, with overlapping characters, his 11 novels can be regarded as a kind of masked autobiography. The books often begin in Canadian villages as small as his birthplace of Thamesville in southwest Ontario, but they soon open up to reveal allegorical allusions and magical transformations. Accidental incidents can have endless effects, and behind everything is the immutability of the human heart. It becomes a defining moment, touching scores of lives and a trilogy of novels.