——

36 — Wednesday, November 9, 1988 — North Shore News

These bare
facts are

pretty

boring

STRIPPER TELLS HER STO

THE COLUMN this week resembles nothing so much as a
literary Gong Show, with contestants ranging in talent and

appeal from the abysmal to the exceptional.

And, just as was the case with
that now-defunct bit of television
mayhem, the winner will only be
declared at the very end. But first,
2 word from your reviewer.

By and large | seldom take the
time to include negative reviews iri
this column. The reason is simple:
even if this newspaper dedicated
itself entirely to book reviews
there would not be sufficient
space to do justice to all of the ti-
tles published each year that
deserve comment. Nothing less
than an encyclopedia would suf-
fice to list the undeserving re-
mainder.

MIKE
STEELE

book reviewer

There are, however, other times
when | feel compelled to hitch up
the word-processor and type to
the fore, rescuing readers from in-
evitable distress. Which brings us
to The Bare Facts by former strip-
per, Annie Ample. .

The Bare Facts would not have
been singled out were it not for
the incredible amount of publicity
it has generated. Any book that is
featured in up to 15 radio and
television reviews in a single day is
bound to mislead more than a few
members of the reading public.

On the surface, The Bare Facts
(Key Porter Books; 177 pp.; $19.95
in hardcover) sounds titillating
enough to appeal to many of us: a
behind-the-scenes look at the life
of ‘the number one stripper in
the world” complete with drugs,
sex and all that other fascinating

- stuff. But don’t take out your

wallets just yet.

The promotional puffery is ex-
tremely misleading. Annie Ample’s
(so-named because, thanks to
plastic surgery, she sports a 44D
chest insured by Lloyd’s of London
for $1,000,000) did nothing more
than promote herself as the
leading stripper so the title is little
more than a sobriquet.

In press releases she is described
as having thrown aside the stripp-

ing circuit to live on a farm near

Sudbury, Ontario while working
with street-kids involved in dope
and prostitution. Don’t expect to
find any of this slag-heap mis-
sionary posturing in the book
‘cause it just ain't there. Ample
has spent the past year since her
retirement writing this book but
“hopes” to get around to the ur-
chins eventually.

Does the book provide any
special insight to redeem it from
the trash-heap? Am | panning it
simply out of prudery? The answer
to both questions is ‘no.’ As it

happens, two women friends of
mine are aiso ex-strippers and
their analysis of the book summed
it up as “superficial,” “glitzy’’
and “‘not very interesting.” It
might as well have been written
by Suzie Sparse.

Old Wounds is another major
disappointment but a qualified
one. Written by Harold Troper
and Morton Weinfeld, Old
Wounds is basically a historical
perspective of the hunt for Nazi
war criminals in Canada and an
examination of tensions between
the fewish and Ukrainian com-
munities.

This, too, sounds like a compell-
ing book and it is if you’re a stu-
dent of sociology but not other-
wise. It is scholarly, definitive, in-
formative and unbiased, but the
average reader will suffer from a
raging thirst long before the first
arid chapter has been traversed.
The authors of Old Wounds (Vik-
ing; 434 pp.; $24.95) have done a
superb job of writing a book with
a limited, rather than mainstream,
appeal.

With Howard Engel’s latest
Benny Cooperman mystery we're
getting closer to our week’s win-
ner. A Victim Must Be Found is
the most recent case of the fic-
tional shamus who has virally
become a Canadian cult figure.

Now, your reviewer admits to a
great fondness for the whodunit
ramblings of this gumshoe who
seems to stumbie from one suc-
cess to another almost in spite of
himself, but, sadly, this is not the
Benny Cooperman of old. There is
something lacking this time
around: the private detective
seems as dispirited as the plot's
handling.

A Victim Must Be Found (Vik-
ing; 265 pp.; $22.95 in hardcover)
finds Cooperman embroiled in of-
fshere potitics, missing art and a
cast of avaricious suspects as he
attempts to discover the reason for
the murder of an old friend.

While this should, in true Engel
style, wake for a satisfying read,
the truth is that his endearing Pi
really doesn’t seem to care one
way or the other. And if the main
character appears indifferent, what
hope is there for the readers? Per-
sonally, | think the author ciid it,
Benny....

And now for our grand champi-
on. The writer whose werk | most
admire is Timothy Findley.

Findley’s reputation long ago
burst its Canadian bounds with the
author earning critical interna-
tional acclaim for his best-selling
The Wars, Not Wanted On The
Voyage and The Telling of Lies.

With Stones, a collection of nine
short stories, Findley has once

See Stones
Page 38

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