SOURCE: Panofsky, Ruth. “Of Loss and Hope.” Canadian Literature, no. 149 (summer 1996): 165-66.

In the following excerpt, Panofsky evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of The Winter Helen Dropped By.

Although each addresses such contemporary issues as the often diminished lives of Native Canadians and the pervasive presence of television in urban North America, two recent novels by W. P. Kinsella and Cordelia Strube are traditional in form and ideology. Each novel charts the linear development of a male protagonist, whose private struggles through a series of difficulties result in a sense of closure. As Jamie O'Day and Milton seek to construct rounded world views out of the disparate, chaotic elements of their lives, they move gradually and progressively toward the hope that concludes their respective narratives.

The Winter Helen Dropped By continues the story set out in Kinsella's earlier novel, Box Socials. Its narrator, Jamie O'Day, begins with a...