The Best of Alden Nowlan

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of English at the University of Prince
Edward Island.

Alden Nowlan’s output over his regrettably short life was 26 books;
this particular selection draws from 12 of them. For those unfamiliar
with Nowlan’s work, Mitcham’s concise introduction is generous and
shrewd. For the initiated, her selection is a sentimental journey into
one person’s “best of” Nowlan.

For his inspiration and content, Nowlan drew extensively on his own
growing up in rural Nova Scotia. He has an intense sense of place, of
family, friends, and neighbors and their interrelationships: “small
places have their own distinct personalities just as small people do.”
They also have close links with their immediate natural environment,
which subtly influences them, often unconsciously. A recurring theme for
Nowlan is how imperceptibly the passage of time affects people and their
perceptions. His style is invariably easy, urbane, reminiscent of the
great essayist Charles Lamb, whose own gentle compassion was not
dissimilar. Nowlan’s aphorisms, dubbed “Scratchings,” bespeak his
own fund of worldly wisdom.

This book can confidently be recommended for inclusion in
secondary-school libraries as a worthy representative of Canadiana.