Summer Gone: A Novel
Macfarlane, a columnist for the Toronto Globe & Mail, earned a measure of admiration for Come from Away, which won the Canadian Authors' Association Award for nonfiction in 1992. This is his first venture into fiction. The gist of the tale is a bit hard to summarize, but it has to do with the editor of a Canadian monthly magazine recalling past summers and winters as he and his young son canoe through Ontario's northern lakes. Macfarlane skillfully evokes an atmosphere at once somber and slightly ominous, but the drama, instead of flowing smoothly, jerks and snaps from past to present, scene to scene, and person to person so that even an earnest attendant finds it difficult at times to follow. Setting and mores are described with an expert hand, but many readers are likely to be puzzled by the often irritatingly abrupt transitions, the curious mixture of present and past, and the intertwining of reality, dreaming, and the twilight in between. Of limited appeal; for collections of Canadian fiction.-A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., BostonCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.