SOURCE: Solecki, Sam. Review of Wild Gooseberries: The Selected Letters of Irving Layton, edited by Francis Mansbridge, University of Toronto Quarterly 60, no. 1 (fall 1990): 162-63.

In the following review, Solecki recommends Wild Gooseberries for its insights on twentieth-century Canadian letters and culture as well as its glimpses into Layton's psyche.

Since Irving Layton is one of the most important Canadian poets (Al Purdy is his only peer), nothing that he writes can be without some interest for us, even if that interest is sometimes primarily historical. Wild Gooseberries: The Selected Letters of Irving Layton is a case in point. While few would claim on the basis of these selected letters that Layton is among the great letter writers, there is little doubt that the volume is among the indispensable books we have about Canadian writing and culture of the past half-century (the first letter is dated 1939, the last 1989).

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