Characters victorious, but book far from uplifting

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Born With A Tooth Stories

By Joseph Boyden

Cormorant Books Inc., Toronto

284 pages

$21.95 (sc)

Joseph Boyden didn't grow up on a reserve in Northern Ontario, but most of the characters contained in his book Born With a Tooth Stories did.

The book is a collection of short stories, most of which take place on reserves in the north, and most of which are narrated by First Nations characters.

While Boyden didn't grow up on reserve, he has more than a passing familiarity with that life. In his biographical information, he talks of his "summertime childhood friends from Christian Island reserve on Georgian Bay."

Later, as an adult, his travels took him farther north, where he taught Communications in Northern College's Aboriginal program in Moosonee, Moose Factory, Fort Albany, Kashechewan, and Attawapiskat.

Reserve life obviously made an impression on Boyden, who found there the inspiration for this collection of stories.

The book contains 13 stories, divided into four sections, one for each of the four directions.

The book starts with East, with a group of three stories under the subhead Labor. Each story in the first section is narrated by a woman, and each tells a story of labor-birth, or rebirth; giving life, or reclaiming it.

The second section is South, subtitled Ruin, and each story tells a tragic tale, with characters leaving the reserve for life in the south, and suffering the consequences. This seems to be a theme running throughout the book-the south, if not evil, is at least bad. Nothing good comes from there, and those that go there meet with disagreeable fates.

Section three, West, is subtitled Running. These three stories, while very different from each other, share the common theme of people working to overcome the obstacles in their way to get to where they want to be, or need to be.

Section four, North, is subtitled Home. The four stories in this final section are actually one story-the same story, told again and again, each time from a different point of view. The technique is an interesting one, giving the story more depth, and giving the reader a look at how the one event affects the different characters in different ways. But it also seems to disrupt the rhythm of the book, because up to that point, none of the other stories are connected in this way.

The collection of stories in Born With a Tooth Stories is a good read, but far from uplifting. While the main character in each story achieves success or redemption of a sort, it is only a partial victory. In the stories, as in life, the time to savor the victory is short before the next challenge appears. Life, and all its struggles, continues.

Boyden is a talented writer. His characters are well put together-real, believable, human. By the end of the book, you feel like you know these people. You feel like you have been to these places with them, and have watched as bits of their lives have unfolded before you.

While three of the stories in the book have been previously published on their own in literary magazines, this is the first time Boyden's work has been published in book form. He is currently working on his first novel, as well as on a biography of a Cree family from the Fort Albany reserve. He now lives in the United States where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.