books Moon Cafe delights, disturbs the three books presented this week vary greatly in A sis so often the case with regionally published titles, their levels of achievement. One is a valuable historical work but so overburdened with minutiae that reading it requires considerable staying power. One is fascinating in content and of his- torical significance but is the vic- tim of time and indifferent han- dling. And one could and should be a contender for the next round of Governor-General’s awards. The latter is Disappearing Moon Cafe (Douglas & Mcintyre; 237 pp.; $24.95 in hardcover), the ‘biography’ of four generations of the Wong tamily in British Colum- bia. Disappearing Moon Cafe opens in the 1890s with a quest by young Wong Gwei Chang for the bones of men who died constructing roads, railways and bridges in western Canada. These skeletal remains he then sends back to China to allow their owners’ souls to gain eternal rest. Wong falls in love with a Native womas but takes a Chinese wife ane establishes a branch of the Wong family in the racially volatile West Coast port of Vancouver. This and succeeding generations of Wongs will be plagued by a variety of human passions and follies right into the late 1980s. The petty squabbles and pre- judices of what was largeiy a pea- sant class permeated the Chinese-Canadian communities that sprang up across North America and yet this reality has lain largely in shadow until now. That Disappearing Moon Cafe is able to illuminate these cultural eee Vout sleenouttoon Care ES), FISH | Aref oF THe DAY, || Se. SAtHon/ of Airy KE0 SNALPIBC Sruvvebire iim? | Ael> SAUTEED Ad LIME BUTTER, A SCAF OOD LOVERS PEUGHT. A PKEY EXPERIENCE 2427 MARE pewe WEST VANCOUVER. 42.6 -8839 MIKE §& 2°! STEELE 4 \ book review recesses is a tribute both to the pioneering daring of author Sky Lee as well as her uncompromis- ing if acerbic writing. Lee’s characters, embroiled in a multi-generational tragedy wherein the personal happiness of the Wong men and women counts for little, are painfully real to the reader. So are the themes of bigot- ry (not at all one-sided), betrayal, duplicity and culture clash. The author, a self-styled feminist, told me in a recent interview that she felt her main audience for Disappearing Moon Cafe was women, but, while the Wong women indeed suffer mightily, the lot of the Wong men is hardly bet- ter. Both sexes are the victims of forces that, while external in ori- gin, are perpetuated by the victims themselves. The doctrinaire myopia of the author aside, Disappearing Moon Cafe is an extraordinarily percep- tive and original novel that will delight and disturb readers of Chinese and non-Chinese backgrounds, whether female or male. ert ‘TOSHIBAN|| 5 TOSHIBA 21° STEREO FST Picture Tube. MTS, 181 Ch.. 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Established on the southern shore of one of B.C.'s greatest nor- thern rivers (not far from present- day Prince Rupert), Essington was typical of the towns spawned by the province’s salmon fishery and canning industry in the 19th cen- tury: it grew, thrived, died and vanished. E.A. Harris was one of the children born in Essington and his history of this town that was obliterated by fire some three de- cades ago reflects the author’s close association with his bir- thplace. While this apparently inspired Harris to go to incredible research lengths (in effect recreating Port Essington), the detail may be too extensive (and exhaustive} regardless of the fascination ghost towns hold for most readers. | cer- tainly found my earlier enthusiasm for the subject waning when only one-quarter of the way through. 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