From the author of the critically acclaimed novel In the Language of Love comes a captivating collection of stories illustrated with wood engravings and line drawings from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The subtle interplay of words and images creates a backdrop for Diane Schoemperlen's witty and intelligent exploration of devotion in its many forms--from material objects and daily rituals, to the pleasures of the body and the pains of romantic love, and even to the delicious stability of the status quo. The result is a playful, sometimes surreal, and often mysterious juxtaposition of a historical fascination with anatomy and classical themes, with the author's contemporary exploration of everyday people, places, and things. Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, has called Schoemperlen the most exciting younger writer in Canada today. With its amusing, deeply moving insights into modern life, Forms of Devotion will make such acclaim universal.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Schoemperlen doesn't cover her tracks, she displays her inspirations proudly, including a 1910 word-association test in her novel, In the Language of Love (1996), and here, in this daring set of stories, a group of elegant old wood engravings. It's obvious why these complex images would appeal to Schoemperlen: they are meticulously detailed, sometimes scientific, yet they always contain something strange or surreal. Her cuttingly witty stories are the same. Almost obsessively precise in their language, they seem to be about ordinary circumstances, but everything convolutes and leads inexorably to startling conclusions. There is a quiet anarchy to Schoemperlen's critique of middle-class life, a viewpoint expressed in the title story and also in "Count Your Blessings (A Fairy Tale)." So dreary is ordinary life for Schoemperlen's narrators that the victim of a robbery doesn't bother to call the police in "Innocent Objects" and rooms take on metaphysical dimensions in "Five Small Rooms (A Murder Mystery)." Schoemperlen could almost form a school of piquant and inventive fiction with Julie Hecht, Janet Kauffman, and Lydia Davis. Donna Seaman
From Kirkus Reviews
Echoing her first novel's artifice (In the Language of Love, 1996), Schoemperlen uses images culled largely from the 18th and 19th centuries as inspiration for her storytelling, winding up with a string of aborted experiments. It may be inaccurate even to call all 11 pieces here stories, since several are witty, wicked mock pieces of social commentary. The title piece offers ten categories for understanding ``the faithful,'' defined through reference to such things as innocence, abundance, and hope, and using as illustrations of these qualities engravings of good burgher-citizens leading unremarkable, inane lives. Similarly, a decorative alphabet seems to have been the inspiration of the concluding piece, ``Rules of Thumb,'' in which the text appended to each letter offers ironic advice on everything from well-being to xenophilia, lampooning those who think too well of themselves to accept the burgher label. Sandwiched between these is more ironic material, ranging from the purely expository ``How to Write a Serious Novel about Love'' to the more allegorical ``Count Your Blessings (A Fairy Tale).'' The latter offers the book's single sop to conventional narrative: A perfect woman, Grace, finds a perfect mate, William, who gives her perfect children but cant prevent her from sinking ever-more deeply into depression, until an old-fashioned doctor making a house call uses radical surgery to cure her (the cure, obviously, being worse than the affliction). Among the less sustained narrative efforts is ``How Deep Is the River?,'' a quixotic look at passing trains, each with its cargo of discontented passengers headed in opposite directions in search of the same satisfactions. While theres no denying the authors considerable skill at turning a wry phrase, all the glitter here yields precious little substance. (144 b&w line drawings and half-tones) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
cuts to the heart,
By Blue Gal (Birmingham, AL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Forms of Devotion: Stories and Pictures (Hardcover)
It seems the earned province of Canadian women writers to cut to the heart of gender, race, and class privilege. In the title piece (I would not call it a story in the traditional character/plot sense) Schoemperlen explores a series of intangibles, among them faith, prayer, and hope, and very subtly weaves them into an indictment of middle class privilege. In a later story, "Count Your Blessings (a Fairy Tale)" Schoemperlen, in a twist reminiscent of the best Roald Dahl stories, cuts the heart out of the woman who has everything and is still unhappy. These stories are well-written, and are accompanied by clever old woodcut clip art. But unlike many short story collections, this is not an "easy" book, for the reader, and I suspect, for the author as well. The book jacket describes her work as "electric"--the prospective reader would do well to remember that electricity can shock as well as enlighten.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pictures and Words in Perfect Harmony,
By Booknut "Booknut" (St. Albert, AB) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Forms of Devotion: Stories and Pictures (Hardcover)
Diane Schoemperlen said she found inspiration for this book when her young son asked her how come her books never have any pictures. She then had the brilliant idea to wrap short stories around antique drawings, 100 year old catalogue pictures and illustrations from the original Gray's Anatomy. The results are stories that are compelling on their own but are perfectly enhanced by the pictures put in them. A great gift or coffee table book to be flipped through again and again.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
magic under a microscope,
By A Customer
This review is from: Forms of Devotion: Stories and Pictures (Hardcover)
After reading Schoemperlen's Language of Love I couldn't wait to read her new book. I was NOT disappointed. All of the magic and insight and wonder and irony is there. Later when I took a walk on the beach, everything seemed magnified. The sun and a grain of sand were suddenly about the same size and equally amazing.
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