How Do You Spell Beautiful? and Other Stories

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

Patrick Lane has been called one of this country’s “most gifted and
versatile poets.” He is no stranger to awards and nominations for
awards such as the Governor General’s. Critics do not allow one to
forget that his life, too, has been marked by the sudden and casual
violence that populates his work. In assembling this anthology, Lane has
mustered a renewed vigor for his already well-established reputation.

The world he represents here is a familiar one for him: tough mill
towns where people scrape together a living and wring out ammoniac
diapers with aching hands. Lane brings to each of these stories his
poetic eye for telling detail and his uncanny ear for knowing exactly
when to reveal a color, gesture, or fact. What humor exists is roughneck
or as bitter as the straight alcohol that fires these abused and abusive
lives.

The quality that makes these stories special is that Lane gives the
reader a full chance “to peer around the edge . . . to the margins [of
the picture] as if what wasn’t there was more than what was.” He has
an exquisite sense of what to suggest and what to leave unsaid or
unexplained. Thus many of the pieces finish with no real ending, except
in the peculiar echo of Lane’s language as it bounces through the
valleys of each reader’s mind. This is a particularly perspicacious
technique, since the author often evokes difficult realities such as
physical and sexual abuse without taking an overt, politically correct
stance. The personal effect on the characters of the trailer courts of
these stories is, however, more than evident.

This anthology would make a splendid teaching resource, with students
trying to follow through the strokes of Lane’s deft observations. It
is definitely a contemporary Canadian treasure.