SOURCE: "A Slight Parodic Edge: Swann: A Mystery," in Multiple Voices: Recent Canadian Fiction, edited by Jeanne Delbaere, Dangaroo Press, 1990, pp. 104-15.

In the following essay, originally published in 1989, Thomas discusses Swann's illusive and complex nature.

No writer has shown us more clearly than has Carol Shields in Swann the paradoxical and illusory nature of things we covet, collect, think we possess and, in the end, lose. In Swann exactly 125 of the poems of the murdered Mary Swann were printed in a collection called Swann's Songs by the eccentric, crotchety journalist, publisher, humanist and editor, Frederic Cruzzi. Of the 250 copies originally printed, only 20 are known to have survived at the outset of the story; we learn later of the narrow escape all of the poems had in a crazy domestic disaster in the Cruzzis' home even before publication; in the end, all the eager owners of the...