Bishop's Road

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and the
Public, and the editor of “Improved by Cultiv

“On Bishop’s Road Mrs. Miflin’s tenants wake to the day. One heads
around back to walk in the garden. Another slides like a ghost out of
the front door and down to the river. Someone lies on her bed and tries
to remember where she was yesterday and on the third floor landing a
very sad woman sits in an old chair near the window. If she squints real
hard she can see all the way through the trees and into the park from
here.” So ends Safer’s novel, almost as it began, with a boarding
house full of misfits—“crazies,” they are often called—whose
daily excursions into unreality and frenzied attempts to cope with
reality occupy the pages of the book. There is Maggie, and Ginny
Mustard, and Eve, and Judy, not to mention Mrs. Miflin herself, living
surreal lives, mainly in their own imaginations, in a kind of Kafkaesque
world in St. John’s.

Safer is indeed a fine writer, with not only a brilliant imagination
herself but also a fine grasp of intimate detail and an engaging style.
The novel, however, might be too intricately woven for most readers, and
it becomes tedious trying to sort out (and remember) the multiple
personalities.