The individuals populating the ten short stories of Wilderness Tips for the most part belong to a reasonably welleducated bourgeois world in which they are modestly successful professionals—these are not working class heroes by any means, and the only truly marginal social misfits appear as nameless transients on Toronto's indifferent streets.

Many have a foothold among what might be called the cultural elite—college professors (Connor of "The Bog Man," Richard of "Isis in Darkness"); art collectors (Lois of "Death by Landscape"); media stars (the editorial journalist Marcia of "Hack Wednesday" or the television talk show host Susanna in "Uncles").

Some are only hangers-on to the power structure, while others operate in the big leagues but with decided ambivalence about the trade-offs they've made (the narrator of "Weight"). Still others gleefully wield power in the thick of the cor porate jungle—until, that is...