Most Wanted

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

The title story in this collection, “Most Wanted,” features two
characters, Francie and Maddox, who both want and need each other
desperately but whose hang-ups and pride keep them achingly apart. They
are members of a large (larger-than-life?) set of dysfunctional
characters who inhabit the 13 stories in this collection. We come upon
them in seemingly normal situations—mainly domestic—but suddenly
find they are quite abnormal, thus causing the situations to become
charged with all sorts of strange relational and psychological tensions.
Whether it’s Lorna with her incubus, Maddox who’s received a
mind-changing jolt from his electric guitar, or Roy the cross-dresser,
we are among people for whom the title of the book might be “Most
Unwanted.” But they survive, show moments of compassion, and sometimes
rise above their situations, and so we survive with them, mainly because
Kady is such a brilliant writer. Her characters live, if not the way we
would like them to, at least as fictional realities. And even when we
fail to sympathize, Kady’s prose style entrances and beguiles, so that
the pleasure is real, if nothing else seems so.