SOURCE: "Memorable Images," in Books in Canada, Vol. XXII, No. 3, April, 1993, pp. 8-13.

[Birdsell is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and critic. Glover is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and critic. Hodgins is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, educator, and critic. In the following excerpt, these three judges for the Smith Books/Books in Canada First Novel Award for 1992 present their varied appraisals of Amnesia, which was nominated for the prize.]

[Sandra Birdsell]: I found Douglas Cooper's Amnesia confusing and difficult to follow. It beings at the city archives in the office of an archival librarian. He is the keeper of memories and of history, but cannot recall his own. It has been taken from him by an event he can't remember. One fall day, several hours before he's to be married, the archivist is in his office when a man called Izzy walks in...