CONTENTS

         Introduction

PART I: 1982–1989

1982–1989

1      Dennis Revisited

2      Wondering What It’s Like to Be a Woman: The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike

3      The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Difficult Loves, by Italo Calvino

4      Margaret Atwood Remembers Marian Engel

5      Introduction to Roughing It in the Bush, by Susanna Moodie

6      True North

7      Haunted by Their Nightmares: Beloved, by Toni Morrison

8      Afterword to A Jest of God, by Margaret Laurence

9      Preface to The Canadian Green Consumer Guide

10    Great Aunts

11    Introduction: Reading Blind, The Best American Short Stories

12    The Public Woman as Honorary Man: The Warrior Queens, by Antonia Fraser

13    Writing Utopia

PART II: 1990–2000

1990–2000

14    A Double-Bladed Knife: Subversive Laughter in Two Stories by Thomas King

15    Nine Beginnings

16    A Slave to His Own Liberation: The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel García Márquez

17    Afterword to Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

18    Introduction: The Early Years, The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen

19    Why I Love The Night of the Hunter

20    Spotty-Handed Villainesses: Problems of Female Bad Behaviour in the Creation of Literature

21    The Grunge Look

22    Not So Grimm: The Staying Power of Fairy Tales: From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, by Marina Warner

23    A Rich Dessert from a Saucy Carter: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories, by Angela Carter

24    An Experiment in Love, by Hilary Mantel

25    In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction

26    Masterpiece Theatre: Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art and The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, by Lewis Hyde

27    The Awkward Sublime

PART III: 2001–2004

2001–2004

28    Mordecai Richler: 1931–2001: Diogenes of Montreal

29    Introduction to She, by H. Rider Haggard

30    When Afghanistan Was at Peace

31    Mystery Man: Some Clues to Dashiell Hammett

32    Of Myths and Men: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner

33    Cops and Robbers: Tishomingo Blues, by Elmore Leonard

34    Tiff and the Animals

35    The Indelible Woman: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

36    The Queen of Quinkdom: The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, by Ursula K. Le Guin

37    Introduction to Ground Works, edited by Christian Bök

38    The Wrong Box: Matt Cohen, Fabulism, and Critical Taxonomy

39    Introduction to Doctor Glas, by Hjalmar Söderberg

40    Napoleon’s Two Biggest Mistakes

41    Letter to America

42    Writing Oryx and Crake

43    George Orwell: Some Personal Connections

44    Arguing Against Ice Cream: Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, by Bill McKibben

45    Foreword: Victory Gardens, A Breath of Fresh Air, by Elise Houghton

46    Carol Shields, Who Died Last Week, Wrote Books That Were Full of Delights

47    Resisting the Veil: Reports from a Revolution

48    Introduction to The Complete Stories, Volume 4, by Morley Callaghan

49    He Springs Eternal: Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times, by Studs Terkel

50    To Beechy Island

51    Mortification

Acknowledgements

Index