The Canasta Players

Description

232 pages
$12.95
ISBN 0-88801-149-0
DDC C813'.54

Author

Publisher

Year

1990

Contributor

Reviewed by Matt Hartman

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Review

Tefs’s third novel (his Figures on a Wharf was a finalist for the
Books in Canada First Novel Award) is prefaced with a series of
epigraphs, one of which says, “In play there is something ‘at
play’ which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning
to the action. All play means something.” The Canasta Players
illustrates this statement as it applies to the life of a Winnipeg
yuppie entering his mid-life crisis.

Michael Samuels, a university English professor, cottage-owner, and
dabbler in the stock market, would not allow that what he wants is
“play.” His second marriage is going relatively well; he has money
in the bank, and his stocks are moving up. Why, then, does he fall into
an affair, suffer insomnia, and spend time in self-analysis?

Michael’s second wife, Mary, is much better with answers to her own
questions. Involved in an affair of her own, her feelings of guilt are
embedded in professional worries about her real estate business and
personal worries about Michael’s poor relationship with his daughter,
Jane. Jane is a child of Michael’s first marriage; she moves from one
bad relationship into another, dragging her father and Mary along with
her.

Michael worries about his health. He drinks too much, worries too much,
jogs and runs to little purpose. What we have here is a man no different
from others of his age and lifestyle. Tefs tries to make his plight
immediate by telling the story in the first person, and this results in
a sort of breathless style. The problem is that the story is
uninteresting, and the reader finishes with no empathy, and no sense of
catharsis. But Tefs is fond of description, and he is rather good at it.
Where the novel misses the mark is where it is in expense of the
development of characters who, too often, fail to excite either the
reader or each other with honest feeling.

A minor complaint: there is a binding mixup of six pages and the
signatures are poorly glued.

Citation

Tefs, Wayne., “The Canasta Players,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed November 5, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/10924.