Between the Lines

Bruce Meyer teaches English at Trinity College, University of Toronto.

This series of conversations with Canadian literary and artistic
figures, including Margaret Laurence, Barker Fairley, Northrop Frye,
Robertson Davies, and Tom Marshall, is undermined by interviewer Hilda
Kirkwood’s frustratingly narrow approach. Her interview with Northrop
Frye, for example, is constricted by her concentration on the subject of
The Canadian Forum. Similarly, in a 1994 interview with Robertson
Davies, she focuses on Fifth Business and The Manticore; one is left
with the impression that a more badgering interviewer would have coaxed
a great deal more from the ever-articulate Davies. Perhaps even more
unforgivable is the publisher’s failure to provide a table of
contents, author biography, index, and bibliography. Between the Lines
amounts to a series of missed opportunities.