Death is a lure and a tease. And Heloise is its Siren. The book is only 100 pages in length and can be read in one sitting. Anne Hebert was a master of written word. Originally written in French and translated by Sheila Fischman (kudos), this book wastes no words to create detailed, unforgettable images in so few pages. Many of the sentences are expressed in a direct, imperative writing style which creates a sense of urgency.

Date ´s precise´ment par Anne Hebert elle-meˆme a` la fin de chaque nou-velle. Cela pourra permettre de de ´celer une evolution sur une pe´riode de pre `s d’un quart de siecle, entre le creux de la Grande Noirceur et le de´but de la Re´volution tranquille. Je ne reviendrai pas sur tout ce qui a e ´te ecrit sur Le torrent, sinon pour.

I’ve read all of Anne Hebert’s books, and find this one to be her dark Death is a lure and a tease. And Heloise is its Siren. The book is only 100 pages in length and can be read in one sitting. Anne Hebert was a master of written word.

Originally written in French and translated by Sheila Fischman (kudos), this book wastes no words to create detailed, unforgettable images in so few pages. Many of the sentences are expressed in a direct, imperative writing style which creates a sense of urgency. I’ve read all of Anne Hebert’s books, and find this one to be her darkest. Disappointingly, the last paragraph of the book is the least dramatic, as if Hebert herself did not know how to end the book, and pull the reader out of the hypnotic trance that she created.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: TRANSLATIONS 383 eccentric. Indeed, the effect of Bill Ballantyne's AI Cornell in The AlCornell Story (Playwrights Canada, 64, $4.95 paper) relies on our having heard his opinions, stories, and wisecracks before.

AI is not exactly a bore, but he is a little shopworn, and behind the assumed patter, evidently, more than a little frantic. A second-rate cocktail pianist, he talks about everything but his true self; the anecdotal versions run along the lines of the time he played with Buddy Rich.

The populist rhetoric of his opinions of the world and its ways only makes plainer his pathetic evasiveness, and the action of the play largely sees him in retreat, from his agent and a challenging audition, from his family, and from his present job. But he does not disappear entirely: he is back at the piano in the closing scene,as full ofhis instant opinions as ever, a comic survivor. We are not to take his crisis too seriously, and the play is carried along by the sheer liveliness of his gab.

In David Type's Just Us Indians (Playwrights Canada, 55, $4.95 paper) the setting is once again domestic, and the people are the roomers in Mary's Cabbagetown house, whichis, as she puts it, something of 'a freak farm.' The play begins with a series of monologues of failure: from Mary, who has never escaped from her run-down neighbourhood; Bobby, an ageing transvestite; and Tashie, who has left her reservation in search of something better. Mary, at least, is armed with a defiant optimism which her experience has never dented, and she does what she can to impress it on those around her. She tries it even on Ted, an aggressive young thug who steals money from the house, and she succeeds to the extent that he brings it back when he has won more while gambling. Inspired by her reading of this episode as a parable, she literally transforms the whole world of the play, waving her broom like a wand to produce a stairway to the stars and pantomime costumes for everyone, closing the action with tongue-in-cheek fantasy.

Type's writing has wit and energy, and, if the play is hardly original, its vitality should impress both actors and audiences. Translations KATHY MEZEI 'I don't see what you have against her, except that she is so original.' Well, I don't like originals, I like translations.'