SOURCE: “The Hood Line: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” in Books in Canada, Vol. 9, No. 7, August, 1980, p. 9.

In the following essay, Owen offers a favorable review of None Genuine Without This Signature.

In this one [None Genuine Without This Signature], there is as always enough entertainment and interest to justify the reviewer's recommendation; as usual, the entertainment and interest lie more in the stories' reporting and comment on the actual world than in specifically fictional, imaginative qualities.

There are two recurrent themes. One is the falseness of the consumer society whose wants are dictated by advertisers: an easy target for satire, but it's pleasant to watch Hood scoring his bull's-eyes, especially in the first story, “God Has Manifested Himself Unto Us as Canadian Tire.” The couple in it, Dreamy and A. O., buy almost everything they see advertised, and discuss their possessions in a heightened version of the...