Sane outpori in a lunatic world Chips & Gravey. A Ghostly Love Story by William Gough. Hounslow Press. Price: $14.95 SIT always like this in Newfoundland?” asks a character in this haunted and haunting romance. A reasonable enough question, since Wendy Lo, proprietress of the title’s misspelled restaurant, has just stepped out of a bliz- zard-bound bus into a roadside shelter and discovered the two survivors of a car-truck smashup are none other than her husband, Norman, who went out for a Joal of bread 13 years ago, and her live-in boyfriend and cook, Phonse Skiffington. But, since the speaker Susie Hopkins is a ghost, once a promis- ing country singer long dead in a plane crash, and lifelong obsession of Phonse Skiffington, the detini- tion of reasonable is particularly elastic in the neighborhood of George's Cove, Nfld. H, as Susie observes, “the only sensible people | ever met turned out to be crazy,” then the Cave is an outport of sanity in a lunatic world. The most sensible man in town is Wendy's stepfather, Skipper Lo, who has spent the last decade in bed, carving decoys and watching re-runs of the New/vwed Game, insisting that Confucius would do likewise in this time and place. Phonse’s friend, Amador Major, wears a cowboy shirt and twin cap pistols he fires off in moments of exaltation and Phonse’s mother, “the most feared woman in town," lives in a house rigged like a ship, confidently expecting the return of her dead husband while she lovingly tends a greenhouse full of plastic flowers. Studded with wit like a winter tire, Gough’s writing is lyrical, but never self-indulgent as he transforms these apparent crazies into the nicest anu sanest people you'd ever want to meet. The idea of a ‘‘ghostly love story” is hardly new; Hollywood John Moore BOOK REVIEW rehashed it again fast year with Ghost, but Gough puts such a fresh spin on it that you'll be only too willing to suspend your disbelief for the ending. Canadian writers understandably love small towns: a social microcosm, refuge for eccentrics who would be labelled “dysfunctional” in a metropolis. the small town is a perfect stage for characters to strut and fret and assume mythic proportions. More than that, they are surviv- ing repositories of uniquely Cana- dian ways oi life, still unhomogenized by “North American culture,”” and underly- ing Gough’s upbeat tale is a darker theme: the deliberate destruction of the special societies of the Newfoundland outports by federal and provincial governments who decided they were inefficient and simply withdrew services, strangl- ing the towns and driving the in- habitants into urban centres where they could become unemployed and dysfunctional. Hounslow Press seems to be making a laudable attempt to find and publish writers who write good stories, even if their names don’t decorate the cover of evc:y Canadian anthology. Gough’s success as a CBC-TV producer gives his prose a sense of pace too often missing from Ca- nadian fiction. Chips & Gravey is an argument for hunting up his previous work; Maud’s House, The Prosper Lover, and The Last White Man in Panama. Museum may move location From page 20 He isn’t interested in turning it into the standard community museum, where the main attrac- tions are dusty, period rooms and “‘granny’s spinning wheel.” “What we have in North Van- couver is very much an urban cammunity,”’ says Inglis, “We don’t need to repeat a heritage village or the sort of thing you find in the Delta, Langley or Surrey Museums. I'd like to give pecple an idea of how an urban com- munity like North Vancouver grows... want to examine how it develops services — like public transportation and health services. { hope we'll tell that story in a dif- ferent way, using a mix of histori- cal photographs, film, video and artifacts.” Having people experience that sense of history, he says, is “a way to touch people's experience. That's what museums should do.” he says, “touch people’s experi- ence.” Inglis seems undaunted by the challenge, even in atime when most of Canada’s galleries and museuns are suffering from declining attendance, Museums in particular have come to be looked upon as stuffy, removed and out of touch with the society they attempt to represent. Sayings like, “It should be ina museum,” or, “It's a museum- piece,’ demonstrate these views. According to Inglis, museums on the whole have done a poor job and need to become more responsive to the public if they hope to survive. “Today people are travelling more and they're beginning to demand more trom their museums. They won't tolerate just anything. Teachers want some- thing pretty sophisticated now, they expect docents to be good. Gone are the days when you went toa Museum just because il’s what you did.” His prescription for the North Shore Museum would include: promoting it better as a tourist destination and improving acces- sibility by moving it, possibly to the waterfront; creating an attrac: tive permanent exhibit and regular temporary exhibits, as well as quality school and public pro- grams. i Wednesday. August 7, 1991 - North Shore News - 21 Anchor-ju “German and Continental Cuisine” NEW LOCATION: 1301 Lonsdaie Ave., N.Van. Chef Jochen and staff are pleased to serve you again on the North Shore, breakfast, lunch or dinner. 980-9508 vi TDUAT THESAVINGS Summer Inventory BLOW-OUT! on all parts & accessories PLUS special prices on bikes GET INTO THE RIGHT GEAR AT THE RIGHT PRICE! 1845 Marine Drive, West Vancouver 922-0123