In The Language of Love

The author uses 100 words from a turn-of-the-century word association test as chapter titles and from these free-associates a life. Joanna is a woman much like me and, I suspect, many others. The novel focuses on the banal in that peculiar Canadian way that creates a comforting familiarity that resonates within the reader. We are introduced to Joanna's parents with whom she has a very complicated relationship, her lovers, one of whom she hurts, another who breaks her heart and the third who becomes her husband and with whom she has a son. These relationships epitomize the teeter-totter manoeuvering that goes into balancing "the dialectic of faith and fear which will turn you inside out eventually and then you will know how to begin." This book was like a guilty little treat for me as I stole the time to read it when I should have been doing other, more productive things. Last year I read "Our Lady Of the Lost and Found" and enjoyed that enormously as well.