Ian Gordon Malcomson

A Child Shall Lead the Parents, Jun 18 2013

Congratulations to Coetzee for taking on a most difficult subject in a very creative way: the limits to personal freedom in modern society. The narrative involves a fascinating situation where a young boy named David is raised by his parents in a futuristic world where the faceless state maintains ultimate control over its citizens. Those who resist public authority in pursuit of personal whim and fancy stand to be outed or alienated. In this context, a young boy and his surrogate father, Simon, have arrived at a relocation centre in a country with no identity other than a bond they have formed as father and son along the way. Their memories are based simply on the fact that they have lost… Read more

At Home With Oneself, Jun 16 2013

"Causeway" is Canadian writer McIntyre's personal memoir of his life growing up in Cape Breton in the 1950s. As autobiographies go, it is lively, informative, and evocative in what it says of tradition about to become modern. It is a warm and touching narrative of a young kid learning the value of family in his formative years. McIntyre, as a writer, has a wonderful way of bringing the big world out there into the backyard of inconsequential little no-place Port Hasting and changing a young boy's life forever. This was a decade when the island was going to finally become connected to the mainland through the building of the improbable causeway. It was a time in the young boy's life when an… Read more

A Nation in Search of Justice, Jun 12 2013

For a good portion of this month, after our return from holidaying in Iceland, I have decided to get into reading Laxness' literary works on an earlier Iceland as retold using themes from the Sagas. Having only read one of his novels before, I want to test out this writer's ability to create an informative and colorful narrative that taps the national pulse of history of a culture coming to grips with its incessant demand for respect and justice. In "The Bell", Laxness, an accomplished story-teller and Nobel Prize winner, produces a very engaging adventure that captures the daily moil and toil of bitter Icelanders as they seek revenge for wrongs done them in the past. The time is the early… Read more