Jane Rule's fifth novel [The Young in One Another's Arms] will probably be the first to find a wide audience, since it comes after the success of a timely work of non-fiction [Lesbian Images] and a gust of publicity. Two national magazines have already introduced to the whole country a woman who came across in her interviews as attractive, brilliant, courageous, enormously talented, industrious and—perhaps most appealingly of all—neglected. This combination adumbrates the way in which a large part of literary Canada likes to see itself, and Jane Rule thus appeared in these magazines as quintessentially Canadian. The image is even enhanced by the fact that she was born and bred in the United States.

I am one of those readers for whom the fifth novel is the first, one who admired Lesbian Images and looked forward to reading more Rule. I am disappointed, and my...