[.ca] By a Frozen River: The Short Stories Of Norman Levine (ISBN 0886194032)

Amazon.ca:
Norman Levine has never been particularly well known in Canada, which is a shame, for he has long been one of Canadian fiction's best ambassadors, with an enviable and impeccable reputation in Britain and Europe. By a Frozen River, a career-spanning selection of Levine's short stories, should eventually change this, for it is a delightful and powerful volume. Levine's stories are nearly always semi-autobiographical, and By a Frozen River follows the shape of Levine's own life, from his RCAF service in the Second World War to his residence in St. Ives, Cornwall, and his eventual return to Canada. Levine is an intimate writer whose explorations of the lives of a writer's family and friends are devastatingly honest and finely wrought. Critics love to praise Levine's "spare prose," but this is misleading, for it suggests a Hemingway sound-alike, and Levine is nothing of the sort. He is not an artificially terse stylist, but a writer who employs a subtle restraint that gives his stories a rare power. The cumulative effect of By a Frozen River is perhaps its finest aspect. Read consecutively, these stories become a kind of loose, erratic, stunning novel. Almost all of Levine's stories share the same quiet, keenly observant, slightly world-weary voice, and their characters are equally consistent and persistent. Nevertheless, each story has its own autonomy and carries a far greater weight than a single chapter of a novel. By a Frozen River is an essential collection, one which hopefully will reintroduce Levine's fiction to his own country. --Jack Illingworth