SOURCE: "Urban Logos," in Books in Canada, Vol. XXII, No. 1, Fall, 1993, pp. 43-4.

In the following review, Giangrande describes The Innocence of Age as "a book with a strangely engrossing mix of banality and wisdom."

Faced with the distressing truths of racism, poverty, and crime, city dwellers find insight and wisdom in short supply these days. Neil Bissoondath's latest novel, The Innocence of Age, appears to offer some of both. It tells the story of a father-son conflict that embodies the clash of old, genteel Toronto and the new multicultural city of cold glitz and destitution.

It's a good, readable tale, and Bissoondath tells it with honesty and sensitivity. Yet it's only occasionally moving, and too often falls into trite and predictable ruts. It's possible that the author harbored some back-of-the-mind anxieties about whom he might offend—no small worry in a novel with a multiracial cast of...