SOURCE: "A Safe Place," in Books in Canada, Vol. XIX, No. 7, October 1990, p. 35.

Below, Summers reviews On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows, praising all but two of the stories.

A flock of pigeons flutters down toward the balcony of a Toronto apartment. An aging man, whose family duty it is to shoo them away, lets them settle, even though he knows they will foul the balcony.

Mr. Ramgoolam figured that everybody—even birds—needed a safe place to land. Surely their wings would tire, he thought. Surely even pigeons, with their innate sense of direction, occasionally needed a point of reference from which they could reassure themselves of their place in the world.

This need for a place in the world, both physical and psychic, is a question that recurs in several of the 10 stories in Neil Bissoondath's new collection. It is seen in its most basic aspect...