First effort needs rework

Page 19

By The Skin of the Teeth

By G.E.M Munro

Tangent Books, Inc.

307 pages

$24.95 (sc)

When I saw G.E.M. Munro's recently published work of fiction, By the Skin of the Teeth, with a painting by him illustrating the front cover, I wanted to like the book.

I was only a little amused that the paperback, self-published under the imprint of Tangent Books, Inc., had an even larger photo of the author on the back. After all, it is his first book in print; he wants to be known. There is none of the usual salutary jacket-back copy, but on the inside back flap was another photo of the author. Mmm . . . no writing, just the picture. My question became then, would I find the author in the story too?

It's a work of fiction about the seamy side of Saskatoon and about Native people's subsistence in that environment, written by a former newspaper columnist for the now defunct Saskatoon Free Press.

"Write what you know," is the advice given most often to budding authors, and with Munro's experience as a journalist in that city, you would expect him to have a handle on his subject.

He does, insofar as that relates to knowledge of the inner city's social problems and the prejudice that Native and poor people encounter from their less transient neighbors, agencies and authorities.

In the forward, fellow journalist Warren Goulding, who also recently published a Saskatchewan-based book about Natives, sets up Munro's work as a testament to the truth about survival in the decaying substrata of downtown.

Sorry to say, though, I don't find Skin of the Teeth as powerful a book as does Goulding and I can't agree with the great reviews of it that I have seen published on the Web. Just because it shows empathy for the plight of the unfortunate and it sounds a call to action for marginalized Natives is no reason to ignore the book's faults.

And faults there are plenty, once you get past the fact that Munro or his wife, who handles publicity, at least chose a readable typeface for its 307 pages.

Mainly, Munro puts dialogue into the mouths of street people that they don't use in real life. The speeches of Solania, the prostitute who doubles as a prophet and becomes the love of protagonist journalist Perles' life, don't ring true. They're speeches.

Native people in the circumstances of this fictionalized character just don't talk this way:

In her first encounter with Perles, in a restaurant, Solania asks him for money. Perles says no and asks her why she thinks he'd give her money if he had any. Solania says this:

"One day you will kneel before me as my servant, and when you rise again, it will be as my knight. But before you come to that day, you will have great suffering."

Perles, who is nearly always suffering from the need for a drink or recovery from drink, thinks -he just met her, remember-"I think I must be resembling a fish she's caught and holds gasping in her hand." He answered, "What audacity! I bend my knee to no one."

Solania's character is flat and undernourished, much as her body is portrayed. We're supposed to believe she, with no identifiable connection to any Native community, shows up in Saskatoon and starts spouting visions and minor prophesies, not a few of which involve Perles. All of a sudden other Native people rally around her and become activists in the cause of their own downtrodden rights.

With Solania to lead the charge, there are demonstrations and challenges to the same civil authorities that kept them cowed until the guru lady appeared. Nobody thinks to ask Solania what she's been sniffing, as they might do in real life.

When her own words fail her, she quotes Perles. She goes to the newspaper office, reads and absorbs his columns, which echo her own opinions. She "hungrily consumed his eloquence and dark wit in defense of the defenseless." Not bad for a street person.

Perles, too, is an enigma. As an alcoholic newspaper columnist hanging tenuously onto his job, we are supposed to believe that he defends te underdog by day and perhaps murders them by night. Even Perles doesn't know the truth. Not just whether he committed one murder, but several. Someone plants the clues to implicate him and he actually wonders if he's done it. But again, his character hasn't been developed to make us wonder too.

The exposition, in dialogue or otherwise, needs an overhaul. It's here that I wonder if I've met a crusading Munro in the book's characters, especially Perles.

Some of the descriptions are good. The book can be salvaged. Munro should rework it and find a commercial publisher. Chances are that with only 2,000 copies printed, not too many people will read what should have been a draft manuscript.