A L'aide, Jacques Cousteau

When Gil Adamson published her first volume of poetry entitled _Primitive_ ,

readers immediately recognized her special voice, with its partnering of the

random and the surreal with a finely tuned technical brilliance. Adamson cites

as her influences Michael Ondaatje, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Creole

writer Mark Richard. Barbara Gowdy hailed the poems' `ferocious energy that

burns through every line,' and Doug Fetherling cited the

collection's`pyrotechnic excellence.' Reviews of _Help Me, Jacques Cousteau_

have already garnered the same level of praise. Doug Fetherling says, `The

linked stories in Gil Adamson's fascinating book proceed from the assumption

that the dysfunctional family is the basic unit of society. When she writes of

coming of age in suburbia, she does so with a poet's ear, a comic's delivery,

and a pathologist's attention to unpleasant detail.'

It is through Hazel's observant but detached eyes that we watch the family's

goings-on, her unflinching vision informed by the precocious perception that

however bad things may be they are only likely to get worse. She watches with

bemusement as they go through the rituals of a Christmas dinner that

culminates in attending the funeral of a man not one of them knew, and of a

wedding that ends with the bride storming out. She senses that her mismatched

parents, narcoleptic and impractical North and prosaic Janey, are headed for a

rupture but is content to let things unravel in their own ineluctable fashion.

Hazel's younger brother Andrew shows signs of following in the family's

unconventional footsteps with his addiction to TV, his bizarre questions (`If

you had to kill your best friend or your parents, which would it be?'), and

his strange inventions, like solar-powered curtains. Yet however odd and even

slightly menacing the world inhabited by these fully-fleshed characters, there

is an unnerving familiarity to their dilemmas and discordancies that makes the

stories resonate with conviction.