Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

This fascinating exploration of the Canadian North as an imaginative landscape by one of Canada's most popular and respected writers, Margaret Atwood, is now in paperback. In this witty and informative book, Atwood discusses the phenomenon of whites going native (the Grey Owl Syndrome): the folklore arising from the mysterious-and-disastrous-Franklin expedition of the nineteenth century in which 135 people disappeared; the myth of the dreaded, cannabalistic now monster, the Wendigo, the relations between nature writing and new forms of Gothic; and how a fresh generation of women writers in Canada have adapted the imagery of the Canadian North for the exploration of contemporary themes of gender, the family, and sexuality. Throughout, the emphasis is on stories and storytelling, myths and their reinventions, fiction and fact, the weirdness of nature and the strangeness of the North. Among the writers discussed are Robert Service, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, E.J. Pratt, Marian Engle, Margaret Laurence, and Gwendolyn MacEwan. This superbly written and compelling portrait of the mysterious North is at once an intriguing insight into the Canadian imagination, and an exciting work from an outstanding literary presence.