Wedding Cakes, Rats and Rodeo Queens

Beverly Rasporich is an associate professor in the Faculty of General
Studies at the University of Calgary and the author of Dance of the
Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro.

This is definitely a novel of the 1990s. Its cast of characters are a
down-and-out “dysfunctional” family who are united emotionally and
psychologically by their common experience of the television series
Gunsmoke. Their experiences of an alcoholic mother, live-in fathers,
rats for pets, incest, homosexuality, and child prostitution unfold as
they mature and develop as individuals. Not surprisingly, the main
characters—Kitty, Jimmy, Glenn, Seely, and Savannah—are
tough-talking, tough-thinking people whose visions are authentically
rendered by the writer.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from a “too much” syndrome—too
many characters, too much regurgitation of the character’s thoughts,
too much salty dialogue, and too much perversity. While the novel may be
true to life, art is not life and literary art requires a deft,
selective hand. The fiction overly wanders to the conclusion, where
Native mythology and mysticism in the form of the bone people
(supernatural spirits seen only by a select few) assist Kitty in
rescuing a stranger-child from sexual abuse. While this premonitory
event is amazingly believable, and is used to begin, as well as to
conclude, the novel, it seems detached from the chronicle of the family
members’ lives and their relationships. Neither is the point of view
entirely clear throughout the fiction. Anne Cameron is an author of
considerable talent—and in this novel her talent shines through.
However, the book is in need of a good editor with a will to cut and
pare.