To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
towards reconciliation, the novel's primary
narrative, takes place against a backdrop of
various geographical locations and historical
events. Davey's travels through Prague
and other urban centres, for instance, provide
a rare glimpse into the gay underground
scene of post-WW II Eastern
Europe. Eventually Davey and his mother
not only come to accept each other's personality,
but acknowledge how similar they
are in temperament. Watmough's choice of
title and opening epigraph from
Shakespeare's Sonnet Three is therefore
particularly apt: "Thou art thy mother's
glass, and she in thee calls back the lovely
April of her prime."
Before being reconciled after a decade
apart, Davey and his mother separately
experience acts of homophobic violence.
These shared experiences draw them closer
and inculcate in them a growing political
awareness about the oppression of certain
marginalized citizens, especially homosexuals.
Davey helps defend a group of gay
men in California from a police sting operation
and Isabella comes to the rescue of a
falsely persecuted young gay man with
whom she is travelling. Such explicit consciousness-raising
guarantees that this
newly discovered dimension of their relationship
will be based on mutual respect
and not just filial obligation, and marks
Thy Mother's Glass as not just another gay
coming-out story, but a story about the
politics of identity.
At his best, Watmough is an old-fashioned
story-teller with an evocative theatrical
voice that conveys both a sense of
whimsy and moral authority. Thus it is a
treat that The Writer's Voice has released a
CD. and cassette of three of his best readings.
Listening to Watmough frequently
can be more enjoyable than reading him.
Each reading recalls some poignant
moment in Davey Bryant's life. As a sixyear-old
in "A First Death," he encounters
death for the first time in a way that underscores
the simple beauty of childhood
innocence. In "The Reluctant Club," the
most entertaining reading, two elderly widows
commiserate over afternoon tea when
they discover that they both have gay sons:
"We share the identical affliction. We are
two old women with pansy sons. We
should belong to some kind of fiendish
club." In the final bittersweet reading,
"Thank You Siegfried Sassoon," a fifty year
old Davey, while recuperating in a hospital
from renal colic, meets a young man with
AIDS. Twisted and distorted from chronic
pain, this "monkey boy" reminds Davey of
a Sassoon poem about a dying soldier in
WW I. As he recalls the closing lines of that
poem, Davey unites these two senseless
tragedies that have cut down two generations
of young men in their prime.
While Watmough may not write with
the same stylistic verve that Scott Symons
does or with the Timothy Findley's thematic
inventiveness, there is no other
Canadian writer of Watmough's generation
who is as passionately committed to
exploring the relationship of homosexual
and Canadian identity. Perhaps that is why
Watmough is able to call himself "the
queen of current gay Canadian literature"
and get away with it.
Nelligan
Pierre H. Lemieux
Nelligan amoureux. Fides n.p.
Gerald Godin
Nelligan Revisité. l'Hexagone Lectures n.p.
Reviewed by Kathy Mezei
In 1991, Oeuvres complètes, a new critical
edition of Emile Nelligan's poems was published,
edited by his biographer Paul
Wyczynski, Réjean Robidoux, and Jacques
Michon; in February 1990, the opera,
Nelligan, opened in Quebec City, with a
libretto by Michel Tremblay. And recently,
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