Consider Her Ways

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Consider Her Ways, which first appeared in 1947, was the last book
published by Frederick Philip Grove, the Canadian novelist who is now
known to have lived an earlier, independent, even sensational life as
Felix Paul Greve in pre-World War I Germany. It is not an easy book to
categorize. Literary critics have difficulty trying to relate it to
Grove’s earlier quasi-naturalistic novels, since its almost whimsical
account of an expedition of ants from Venezuela to New York hardly
suggests realism.

Bakka Books have now placed the work in a different context by
reprinting it in their library of science fiction. This is salutary,
since it will introduce Grove to new readers and encourage previous
readers to approach the book from a fresh perspective. This edition is
attractively produced, and also contains an introduction by
science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer (who properly links it with
imaginative satire by such writers as Swift and Jules Verne) and a
concise but accurate and up-to-date account of Grove’s life. This
publication is timely in view of the almost simultaneous appearance of
Klaus Martens’s important study, F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada
(2001).