As For Me and My House provides a descriptive tale about a preacher and his wife during the depression. Written by the hand of the wife, who remains nameless, the book incorporates vast imagery to help portray the feeble lifestyle they were trapped within. Mr. Bentley, unable to motivate himself to move beyond his unsatisfying profession as a preacher, lives in unhappiness, bringing his wife into oppression with him. Animal imagery is prevalent, as the town and its people are described in such terms. They all cower and protect themselves; with the exception of Judith, who "scales the wind" at the beginning until she discovers her own sexuality and becomes the earth....Can air continue to have 'life' when submersed into the ground?

Through the journal entries of Mrs. Bentley, we are given a beautiful and complex novel of great importance in Canadian Literature. As a story of life during the depression, this book perfectly captures the trials of prairie life during this era. As Mrs. Bentley describes events in her journal entries, we are given a chance to not only accept the text at face value, but to read between the lines. Mrs. Bentley tends to say more by what she doesn't write than what she does. All in all, an incredible book and one which everyone should read.

At its best, Kroetsch's fiction is impossible to resist. The present volume is no exception. The author beautifully evokes every detail of dusbowl Alberta, from rusty old Chevs to rodeos to farmer's daughters. As Johnny backstrom's campaign picks up speed, we watch a man transformed by hucksterism and inflammatory rhetoric. needless to say, parallels to our own politicians are everywhere apparent. But this novel is primarily a yarn, like all of Kroetsch's novels. It bounds along like a prairie school bus--solid, loud, colorful and true.

The Badlands is a terrible book. It alternates from boring the reader to making them cringe at the pathetic attmepts Kroetsch makes at creating patterns, meanings and symbols that transcend character and place. This is the kind of junk that young hacks churn out in creative writing class, and it also seems like it was written with academia in mind. It has all the requirements to meet an English Lit. course's criteria; it can be picked apart and would serve to teach students about different techniques and literary devices, although they could (and should) learn from much, much better authors. This book is dangerous and it sucks, while most books in Canons of literature don't. Also, the devices used to give significance to events are so blatantly out in the open it's as if he just threw together these elements with no concern for story whatsoever- going by the guidelines of one of thse "how to write fiction" books, as it were. (By the way, you should avoid those books at all costs if you're serious about being a writer...they homogenize your vision of the world and inhibit your originality, and you'll end up writing junk like Badlands.)

How this got rave reviews I don't know- how it even got published is a mystery to me. The author seems to be lacking any sort of warmth and understanding of humanity; his characters are flat and don't act as human beings would. This is probably the work of a cold pseudo-intellectual who thinks the world revolves around him and has no concern or compassion for his fellow humans. Considering how the protagonist of this novel is a man who fits that description, I wouldn't be surprised if Kroetsch is what I've pegged him to be. Either that, or he's just a hack who got a lucky break. Maybe he knew the right people, or paid them off, or he slept with the publisher or something.

Not a rewarding book. If you have to read this, I feel for you. If not, avoid at all costs!