The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

similar themes but in a much more gentle
and whimsical tone.
House is also metatheatrical. Victor enters
the theatre acknowledging the audience
and thanking them for "not staying home
and watching teevee." Lighting and sound
effects come on and off at the snap of his
finger. In mid-performance Victor leaps off
the stage and wanders through the audience,
commenting on his surroundings and
his own actions. Given the context of a
monologue and the almost throw-away
nature of these actions, it is questionable how
revolutionary these self-referential effects
are. I suspect that today's audience will easily
assimilate these gestures and find them
more humourous and entertaining than
disruptive of audience expectations. One
observations I have is that Victor's control
of the theatre apparatus, in combination
with his angry and aggressive manner, adds
a strong element of manipulative power
and control to a character whose stories
often picture him as lost and powerless.
Humans is a grab bag of lists, character
sketches, stories and fables. Many of the
stories are delightful and fanciful observations
of human nature and can easily be
interchanged with those in House. "The
Stupid Boyfriend" and "His Smell That
Room Her Green Dress" are particularly
successful. The least interesting are the lists
such as "List for a Lunenburg Bride" and
"Somebody (to 1984)" which seem to
describe individuals but quickly become
reductive and stereotypical.
Overall, House Humans certainly indicates
that Maclvor is a theatrical performer
and writer to watch for on the contemporary
Canadian stage.
On Endings
Roy MacSkimming
Out of Love.
Robyn Sarah
A Nice Gazebo.
Reviewed by Jill Franks
Rare and refreshing is the book that celebrates
coming to terms with endings
instead of romantic beginnings, and this is
the aim of Out of Love. The syntactical
ambiguity of the title suggests the emotional
ambiguity of the ending of this book:
its protagonist falls out of love with both
his ex-girlfriend and ex-wife, while he risks
his life out of love for his son, who doesn't
appreciate his efforts. Jim Urquhart falls
out of love, but in the most positive sense
of the phrase; the epigraph by Durrell indicates
MacSkimming's awareness of the illusory
nature of romantic love and of our
willful self-deception when we are caught
in its throes.
Reminiscent of John Fowles' The Magus
as well as his Daniel Martin, this adventure
novel/psychological thriller tells the story
of an erudite and cosmopolitan publisher
who is called from his home in Toronto to
rescue his son Nick from the machinations
of the fascist Greek government of 1974. His
search for his son, who has been protected
from persecution by Jim's ex-girlfriend
Maria, is also a search for clarity in his feelings
about her and his ex-wife. While Jim is
astonished and pleased to see her again, he
is as alienated as ever by Maria's emotional
honesty and her greater command of events.
He believes, however, that she is using her
knowledge of Nick's whereabouts emotionally
to manipulate him in compensation for
his abandonment of her, just as he had
wedged Nick between them in their previous
relationship. Such coincidence and
poetic justice make this a well-patterned, if
slightly melodramatic story.
Out of Love is not a melodrama that cloys,