Communion

by Graeme Gibson

In COMMUNION, using a new clear, bone-spare prose, Gibson traces the ordeal of Felix Oswald. Felix is now working as a veterinarian's assistant in Toronto, where he becomes obsessed with a great white husky dying in one of the cages. His attempts to free the dog are interwoven with a series of possibilities for his own life, many sexual, some lyrical, and some nightmarish.

The narration proceeds in haunting rhythms which make it mesmerizing reading. By the end, they rise to a harrowing and purgative intensity.

COMMUNION will strengthen Gibson's already impressive reputation.

Genres: Canada

119 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Graeme Gibson CM was a Canadian novelist and conservationist and the longtime partner of author Margaret Atwood. He was a Member of the Order of Canada (1992) and one of the organizers of the Writer's Union of Canada. He was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada. Gibson was best known for his 1973 book Eleven Canadian Novelists, a non-fiction work.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah yes, here we are, another extreme modernist work from Graeme Gibson that no one is reading and no one evidently cares to, including perhaps Gibson himself, who never wrote in this manner again after the twinned debut of which this slim novel constitutes the more austere (though no less hallucinatorily arranged) second part. It's dire and fantastic.

[David]

A nightmare-hallucination-puerile fantasy of a novel. At least it is not utterly lacking in provoking Ciardi’s sympathetic contract. But the most admirable character is the terminally ill husky dog. Voyeuristic, homophobic, misogynistic, surrealistic, plastic. I didn’t much like it.