Displaced Persons

Description

133 pages
$19.95
ISBN 0-88750-465-5

Author

Publisher

Year

1982

Contributor

Reviewed by Mike Schultz

Mike Schultz was a business teacher with the Peel Board of Education.

Review

Fred Bonnie’s nine short stories are simple everyday dramas of simple, everyday people moulded into worthwhile reading. The stories would make excellent material for radio and TV.

“Nick the Russian” tells of a mysterious and intriguing boarder as seen through the curious eyes of a young boy named Benjamin. This curiosity tends to rub off on the reader.

“All-You-Can-Eat-Night” might be a typical evening at a typical chain-food restaurant, but Bonnie’s characters, Jim, Kitty, and Mack, are a comedy of errors portraying the salt and the pepper of the earth.

“Number Seven” is the story of Walter, whose adventures and misadventures on the way home from a convention in Florida are humorously interwoven. “Number Seven” is the bar Walter finds himself in at the airport in Miami. I kept picturing Dudley Moore cast as Walter, a middle-aged family man still asking the musical question, “Is that all there is?” First Walter misses his flight home and then he seriously considers gallivanting off on a cruise to sow the last vestiges of wild oats.

All Bonnie’s characters, and there are many, come from the mainstream of life but are displaced.

Citation

Bonnie, Fred, “Displaced Persons,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed December 2, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/38590.