The Doomed Bridegroom

Lynne Perras teaches communication arts at the University of Calgary.

Myrna Kostash, one of Western Canada’s most accomplished and
critically acclaimed authors, chronicles her attraction to male rebels
and political nonconformists, in a novel whose purpose, she writes in
the preface, is “to explore the erotic possibilities of female
heterosexual desire after the ashes have cooled on the Sexual
Revolution.” Notwithstanding the goals of feminism, there is something
irresistible about the brooding and mysterious lover who is
“unavailable to the claims of intimacy.” His elusiveness—“the
challenge of the male just out of love’s reach”—gives rise to a
powerful attraction.

The novel is divided into six chapters. The first describes the
author’s relationship with an American draft dodger she meets in
university, while the second recounts her attraction to a Greek
organizer for the Socialist Party. Fact and fiction blend in the third
chapter as Kostash imagines encounters with a Ukrainian dissident.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the author’s encounters with two Polish
activists, while the final chapter explores the allure of a young
Serbian.

Kostash records not only conversations, feelings, and romantic moments
but also social and political histories that leave the reader educated
as well as entertained (the book concludes with a lengthy bibliography).
At times the weight of the novel’s ambitions threatens to overwhelm
the sense of passion Kostash wants to convey. That said, The Doomed
Bridegroom is an engrossing read.