What can really be said about poetry? Not too much, I don't think. Whether a poem is good or bad doesn't depend on its form or its subject -- it depends on its author and its resonance with the reader. As for the first, Candas Jane Dorsey writes poetry the way she writes science fiction (A Paradigm of Earth) and fantasy (Black Wine): well. Very well. As for the second, resonance is subjective, but this collection is well worth the risk.

This collection of short stories is amazing. The way the author uses words is truly striking. With her words, she tears away all coverings of the spirit to show people as they really are. Short stories must necessarily show limited character development because of length, but the author gets around the limitation by typically focusing on what happens within a very short period of time. Most of the stories contain little action, just living. But during the short tale you are in the mind of the character. Sometimes you can understand, sometimes you cannot, but you always know that there is a real person with everything that is important in common with YOU.

Most of the stories reflect on the emotional aspects of sexuality, and the sexuality is generally homosexual and usually from a woman's viewpoint. Reading as a heterosexual man, these stories gave me an unusual and warm view of the emotions of a sort of person I am normally not priveleged to know. However, not all the stories contain sexuality as an ingredient. One of my favorites was about a woman who had been a famous ballet dancer, but had contracted a serious muscular disease and was left barely able to walk. A second was about a woman who had cancer and was dealing with the shortness of her future.

These are powerful stories. The only occasional drawback is that they are so intensely personal that sometimes, because people can be very different from each other, it is difficult to understand the feelings that are being expressed. But that problem is not always present, and the strength, the stark humanity in the words, is so amazing that this cannot stand in the way of appreciation.

I would not recommend this book to anyone with homophobic sensibilities, but if you can look past that, you will find reading this book a very rewarding experience.

What fun it is to have the setting as your home town. Although there are some science fiction aspects to the book, it can hardly be described as much more than a typical novel--we are learning about caring, the marginalized and human interactions. I was amused by the political comments reflecting current Alberta ultra conservative politics--obviously the author is as concerned as many of us about the direction the government is taking. The hopping in an out of bed by the protagonist grated somewhat. I kept being told the protagonist was depressed but her ability to work, to care for Blue and her housemates contradicted her assertions. And I could never figure out why her childhood seemed so horrendous. How much of the greiving process reflected Dorsey's own?

But all in all it was a interesting read and encourages me to find other books by Dorsey.

I really enjoyed Dorsey's Black Wine, and this was a complete departure from it, but I enjoyed it anyway. Some of her predictions about the real world were scary but believeable. But unlike a lot of science fiction, the focus was not on the ideas but rather on the characters. I thought Dorsey captured the grey, numb feeling of depression extremely well and the characters were likeable and for the most part well drawn. It was pretty clear from the first 50 pages or so that Mr. Grey and Morgan are meant to get together, but you like both of them so much that it doesn't matter very much.
There were a few things that I didn't like. For one thing, every conservative character in the book was portrayed as bigoted, and in a majority of cases mentally ill. I don't deny that some conservative people are both of these things, but I didn't like the fact that any of the conservative people were given a chance to show their point of view or tell their side of the story. It was wrong, what they do is evil and that's about it. It detracted from the rest of the story by sort of shouting out that it had A POINT. Some of the language got a bit didactic at times and was a bit hard to swallow, but Dorsey's ultimate compassion for her (good) characters and the delicacy and skill with which she can manipulate language won me over completely. This is not a light read by a long road, but it's definitely worth the time and emotional energy spent.

I developed a little test for myself on first opening Candas Jane Dorsey's A PARADIGM OF EARTH. I decided to to wait until this tantalizing word ------ paradigm --- first appeared in the story before looking it up to refine my own gut-feelings about it.

In a way, this was also a test of Dorsey's splendid narrative art as it weaves through a compelling near-future novel, in which an unformed alien and some very unconventional humans are brought together to learn Life 100 in an unexpected context. Well over halfway through (page 264, to be exact) "Blue," a winsome, androgynous extra-terrestrial, declares to the psychically battered Morgan Shelby that she is a chosen human "paradigm" among the dysfunctionals living together in a rambling old house near Edmonton, Alberta. By then, I need not have bothered with a dictionary at all.

While dodging the convoluted systems of Canadian government bureaucracy, untangling layers of conflicted and deceptive sexual liaisons among the odd assortment of people living in her house and coping with the mysterious violence that unexpectedly intrudes on everyday living, Morgan finds herself entrusted with chief caregiver duties for one of a dozen blue-skinned beings suddenly deposited around the world by an alien race. Their plan is to leave these completely unprepared creatures (they're not even toilet-trained!) to be filled with information as a means to learn more about humanity. But from that point on, A PARADIGM OF EARTH powerfully transcends the usual alien/E.T. tale to probe the very core of mature sentient relationships, to visit pain, growth and fear with an empathic intensity few writers achieve so convincingly.

Dorsey takes a bold and risky approach (one that pays off awesomely) by placing all of her characters on the margins of so-called "normal" life. Not only does she create a flamboyant cast of social dropouts and sexually ambiguous eccentrics to fill Morgan's inherited (and expensive-to-run) old house, but even super conditioned by-the-book government officials turn out to have surprising inner lives and emotional attachments that gradually weave meaning into the puzzle.

Tenderness, discovery, betrayal, loss, understanding and affirmation are all part of this potent chemistry of life, from which Blue --- an officially-classified government "secret" living among them --- must learn about Earthlings, while knowing nothing at all about his/her own alien race. The resulting tale is really about one completely displaced entity bonding with another; for Morgan, although rooted in humanity, feels similarly displaced in a universe robbed of meaning and purpose by a series of unhealed losses. Through a gentle interaction of psychic dreaming, a rarified mingling of souls, Blue innately comprehends her despair even while learning to name it.

From the poignant and searching texture of its opening pages, to a surprising but equally poignant leave-taking, A PARADIGM OF EARTH moves richly into the realm of spiritual meaning by way of the complex maze of feelings we call grief --- and comes out the other side into a new and challenging light.

Dorsey, unarguably one of the finest science-fiction writers Canada has ever produced, builds everyday language into an eloquent symphonic fabric of theme and resolution that kept me irresistibly moving from chapter to chapter. Paradigm? The word was perfect; a gentle but uncompromising affirmation that only the wounded can truly understand the art of healing, only the incomplete knows what it means to be whole. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch

Funny, I liked this book at first. I was a little thrown off (as I was intended to be) by shifts between characters and time-frames. My usual approach when I encounter this kind of writing is to put myself at the author's mercy, hoping things will be tied together and that the end result will be worth the discomfort of reading something written this way. Well, the ends get tied together, but I was disappointed with the whole. I felt as if the author kept trying to impress me with how very "artistic" her writing could be, while failing to tell me a story that meritted this kind of treatment. "Black Wine" tells the story of four generations of women trying to choose their own destinies or avoid responsibility, depending on how you view the plot. Yes, there is a fair amount of sex, all of it integral to the plot and characterizations. But while the characters initially intrigued me, they all seemed to fizzle out sooner or later. A more minor gripe: the book is being heavily marketed to a U.S. audience, but its editorial conventions don't conform to U.S. standards--I got really tired of seeing the term "no one" hyphenated. On a literary level, the editing failed to pull this book together and help it move beyond the realm of pretentiousness. "Black Wine" isn't a terrible book, but it didn't seem to offer a whole lot of insight into anything except the author's ego. It caught my attention, but it didn't seduce me or give me anything new to think about.

I have just finished this book- and I feel very lucky to have found it. With so much mediocre to good fiction and/or sf/fantasy around, Black Wine reminded me how enjoyable and transforming a really good book can be. I am reminded of Ursula le Guin- perhaps Russ. It is slightly confusing at the beginning, as it jumps between characters in the manner of a connected series of short stories. But I was delighted as I read on and realised exactly what Dorsey was doing. As for plot/ character/setting- set in a far future, or other world, on a continent with very different cultures in different regions. THere are the sailors, who fly the sky-ships (dirigibles) and have gene tech, allowing same sex couples or families of three parents etc to have children. There is the idyllic mountains, where people share everything, but then there is the SOuth, where no one touches one another, and a mother helps her toddler up after a fall with the end of her broom. And then there is the land ruled over by an evil despot, where slaves have their tongues cut out, and sadism, incest and violence is the norm. The book is first class, superbly and consistently written. i see from one of the reviews on this page that Black Wine may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I am stumped as to why! I think that the more people read this wonderful book- the better!

I got this book as a birthday present from my sister.
As soon as I was done reading it (with that shuddering pleasure that only the absolute best books give you), I passed it back to her to read... and I still haven't got it back, because when she was done, she gave it to her boyfriend to read (someone who is not the biggest fantasy fan), and he won't read the very end, because "But once I finish it, it'll be over!"
I'm considering buying another copy, to re-read it and pass it on again to someone else.

It's amazing that 'Black Wine' is a first novel. The characters are complex enough to fully immerse yourself in their lives. The world is not some faux-medieval wish-fulfillment daydream, but a real, gritty and harsh land - that still somehow has the feel of one of your deepest dreams.
Recommended for fans of Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Atwood, and Sheri S. Tepper. (But having said that, I feel I should add that the "feminist" undercurrent of the book is neither distracting, nor does it leave you with that nasty "agenda" taste in your mouth.)

(oh, and they play Scrabble! Yay! (as Scrabble fanatics, both me & my sister got a big kick out of that!)