Girl on the Subway

Tony Barclay is a retired juvenile corrections probation officer and a
former public-health research associate at the University of Toronto.

Crad Kilodney emigrated to Canada from the United States ready to play
the game of life by the rules. He found that many of the high cards had
already been dealt. In this collection of short stories he fights back
at this perceived inequality with a wry humor and a flair for the
unexpected that reminds one of James Thurber, but with little of
Thurber’s gentle nature.

His stories have been described as dangerous, although I would prefer
the word disturbing. The heart of his stories is a passionate belief in
human rights, in the right of writers to be heard and to say what they
really believe. Those who seek to suppress this right become the object
of Kilodney’s imaginative attacks. He is famous, for example for
making fun of the literary establishment by submitting works by
well-known authors under pseudonyms and getting them rejected.

Kilodney has been writing in Toronto for many years, and for 10 years
has been selling his own work on street corners. Judging by the best of
these stories, and they are certainly good, it is not surprising that he
has been able to support himself. Unfortunately the quality of the work
is uneven, sometimes falling from his own high standards. Perhaps these
stories, which all seem to be autobiographical in form, are too
personal. We might be able to feel more for him and the ideas he
presents if he were more consistent in displaying the broad humanity
that illuminates his best work.