Customer Reviews (3)

This is a superb book.
Eric McCormack is a gifted writer who has woven a bizarre and mesmerizing tale of a man attempting to discover the truth regarding a story related to him by his dying grandfather.McCormack is a master storyteller who possesses unique imaginative abilities.It is a pity that this book is out of print, as I consider it one of the best books I have ever read.

One obsessed man discovers nothing.
This book will give you nightmares.It consists of a series of first hand accounts of the fate of four children.All of them suffer the worst family tragedy not even imaginable.The childrens' tale is told in a series of stories,most of them unrelated, but equally horrible.Due to the the middle ground between horror and reality that Eric scares us with, this book will not allow you to sleep.This book makes one think of, above all, pure madness, In all its forms.There is one bad part.It is so unfortunate that such a horrifying book should end as this one does. I expect much arguement for that remark.But the ending is a dissapointment.

A brow-furrower.
This book is a gem. Fluidly written, not immediately gross, yet scary in an under-the-skin kind of way. To tell too much about the narrative would spoil the experience, yet it's suffice to say that this book will turn you upside down. One of the better endings I've read. Incredibly strange, yet incredibly good ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a book of lucidly written tales to turn your stomach
i found my copy of this book at a discard sale at my local library and read on lunch breaks from my summer job of answering the questions of tourists in my sunny canadian city. with what fascination and horror did iturn these pages, sitting alone with my bagel and carrot sticks in thebasement of the mall! these stories are chilling, beyond chilling, they arecaptivating, they grab you by the back of the skull and won't let go untilyou have come to their inevitable conclusion and looked into the abyss ofhumanity. all twenty tales are epic. all twenty tales will cut you to thebone. and all twenty should be read. ... Read more

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Six rabbits traveling by train to Elderberry for the Easter holiday pass the time by telling tales of rabbits. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Superb Read
This was a superb read.I came across the book unexpectedly and couldn't put it down.I found myself very surprised that I hadn't heard of it when it was published, and have to think that it must have been poorly marketed by the publisher, because it certainly hits all the buttons.Great job, Mr. McCormack - I look forward to seeking out more of your work.

Absorbing storytelling
The story involves a frustrated writer that lives next door to an otherwise unexceptional retired professor who, while on his deathbed, relates his anything but unexceptional family's life history to the narrator. The crux of the tale involves the professor's mother who married two men named Roland Vanderlinden, one ostensibly replacing her first husband's identity. We come to learn the details of both men's lives, and how/why his mother unquestionably welcomes a complete stranger as the return of her husband.

The professor largely frames the orientation of the text, although the levels of narration constant wind amongst themselves. Keeping in mind that an ailing older man is relating the tale, and has to constantly sort the various levels of narration that he himself is narrating, we question its essential veracity, particularly in light of the fact that he has an audience hungry for his every word.

McCormack writes very much in the minimalist mould: monosyllabic words, terse sentences that seem almost child-like in their simplicity. Nevertheless, there is a poetic quality to the prose, as if the words invite a deeper and more revealing reading. Indeed, the text even ascribes various meanings to the book's title. The text's surface is deceptive, its ostensible plainness belying the narrative's complex underbelly.

There are many intriguing plot twists here, which, although startling at times, are never gratuitous or over-the-top. They propel the narrator's frequent visits to the professor to know "what happened next." The book is a veritable encyclopaedia, cataloguing various exotic cultures and places that, to the best of my knowledge, do exist, though you are unlikely to ever hear of them again after putting the book down.

The book has a lot of interesting things to say, particularly about the act of narration. In many ways, the text is a celebration about good storytelling. In fact, our entire knowledge and understanding of the characters comes from this act, a function that simultaneously effaces and creates. The truth appears to be whatever the storyteller says it is and, as many readers are sure to agree, it is never dull.

An unputdownable book!
Told by a Canadian author who's trying to complete his book, this is a story of his ill neighbour, Thomas Vanderlinden, a man who tries to understand his mother's decisions in love and marriages. Our narrator who becomes the confidante of Thomas's family history finds out how Rachel, Thomas's mother, married two men, both called Rowland Vanderlinden. The story involves "husband-swapping, anthropological adventures in Peru and the South Pacific, true love lost to the claws of death, plague-ridden shiploads of exotic animals, a town populated by one-legged Scotsmen, and more".

The Dutch Wife is a brilliantly conceived novel that doesn't fail to provide a realistic and absorbing read.

An incredible cast of characters
This is without a doubt my favorite book in a long long time!
I picked up this book at the airport before a flight. As soon as I started reading I knew this would be an incredible journey.
I loved everything about this book.
The characters are amazing, the story is absolutely fabulous, there is enough new ideas in this book to write a dozen novels. It would make a wonderful movie.
I highly recommend this book if you want to be completely transported , this book will take you to a new world where reality is stranger than anything you could imagine.

... Read more

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A very fast rabbit and a very slow hare, the best of friends, ride in a sailwagon, put up only so long with a know-it-all frog, and build a riverboat. ... Read more

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When, one by one, the normally quiet residents of a British village with a disturbing past become compulsive monologuists, and then die, reporter James Maxwell learns it is impossible to get at the truth about what is happening. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Marvelous Mysterium
An absolutely marvelous book.

The detective in the story visits an isolated hamlet.Where?When?We have no idea.The mystery, who is murdering the townspeople?Indeed, how are the townspeople being killed, as each perishes from entirely different symptoms?Is the motive revenge for a past mining accident involving war prisoners?Was it an accident at all?Or is this a case of romance gone bad?Is this outcome of natural disease or unnatural poisoning?Do we ever find out?It is hard to discover when the prime suspect, pinned by convincing evidence, may just as likely be the next victim.

The murders are the the mystery.The mysterium is glimpsed as the reader eventually realizes that the story is a meditation on the meaning of truth and on the meaning of knowing of truth and even of the knowability of truth.A mysterium wrapped in an enigma...

McCormack draws wonderful characters in strange circumstances with beautiful skill.I bought his book on clearance while in Stratford to see a few plays -- the impact of this Canadian author has stayed with me far longer than those now forgetten theatrical productions.

Mysterious and Engaging
McCormack's novel is a must read. Combining elements of mystery and horror, McCormack's brilliant prose weaves a mystical and terrifying web. Dazzling, absolutely dazzling! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Certum quia impossibile
A great read with enough twists and turns to keep you going.

Later,
J. ... Read more

Product Description
First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women is the story of Andrew Halfnight, whose life-part dream, part nightmare-begins with a mother's tragic choice and ends with a lover's understanding. In between he experiences tempests at sea, relatives who kill for love and lovers who sacrifice their bodies, all the while unknowingly moving ever closer to the central mystery of his, and all existence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A wonderful book by a very gifted writer
I love all of the books that Eric McCormack has written, including this one, and I intend to review them all on Wikipedia, since I see that his books are very much under-reviewed.Here Eric re-imagines a young Scottish man leaving the Scottish mining towns after family tragedies have made him an orphan, going off to cross the world like Gorden Pym before ending up back in "Camberloo" (a cross of Cambridge and Waterloo, the town in Canada where McCormack teaches English Literature) where he enjoys a strange addicted lifestyle of increasing girth and incessant loneliness, never really losing the demons of the past - until they, finally, lose him.

This book follows the usual McCormack tropes of voyage, loneliness, addiction, seafaring, strangers that drift in and out of the story, odd habits (painting prostitutes to look like snake-women), and uncertainties to paint a strongly alluring picture of a habitual paradise.

Check out the recently-created Eric McCormack Wikipedia page - [...]. ... Read more

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Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu. Textbook providing the information necessary to understand and implement basic principles of personal wellness. New features include critical thinking, making healthy changes, self-assessment section, anatomical drawings, and online help. Also includes a built-in study guide. For undergraduates. Previous edition: c1997. Softcover. DNLM: Holistic Health. ... Read more

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Chapters: Svend Robinson, Carol Shields, Irving Layton, Eric Mccormack, List of Ccf/ndp Members, New Democratic Party Leadership Convention, 1971, Sid Ryan, Tommy Douglas, Eric A. Havelock, List of Saskatchewan Ccf/ndp Members, Ted Jolliffe, List of Ontario Ccf/ndp Members, List of British Columbia Ccf/ndp Members, Becky Barrett, Sarah Polley, List of Manitoba Ccf/ndp Members, Donald C. Macdonald, Howard Hampton, William Horace Temple, Frances Lankin, Agnes Macphail, Harry Kopyto, Alfred Gleave, Walter Stewart, List of Nova Scotia Ccf/ndp Members, Shelley Martel, Howard Pawley, Marilyn Churley, Beresford Richards, Dave Barrett, Kalmen Kaplansky, New Democratic Party Leadership Convention, 1961, Major James Coldwell, Allan Blakeney, Desmond Morton, Gerald Caplan, Clarence Gillis, Michel Chartrand, Saul Cherniack, New Democratic Party Leadership Convention, 1995, Ben Isitt, George Hara Williams, Brian Charlton, Pat Martin, Russell Paulley, Seymour J. Farmer, F. R. Scott, Stanley Knowles, Roland Penner, James Simpson, Dennis Drainville, List of Alberta Ccf/ndp Members, William Ivens, William Dennison, Robert W. Mackenzie, Ruth Grier, Barrie Zwicker, Michael Cassidy, Frank Underhill, List of Yukon Ndp Members, Graham Spry, Pedram Moallemian, New Democratic Party Leadership Convention, 1989, John Queen, Arthur Henry Williams, Peter Kormos, Rae Luckock, Steve Ashton, George Armstrong, Richard Allen, Tom Uphill, Walter Pitman, Donovan Swailes, Tony Silipo, Rodney Young, John Hewgill Brockelbank, Harold Edward Winch, Richard Johnston, Moishe Lewis, Gilles Bisson, Margaret Mitchell, Rosario Marchese, Judy Rebick, Earle Birney, Robert Strachan, Lloyd Shaw, Mel Watkins, Kalle Lasn, Joseph W. Noseworthy, Murray Cotterill, Ernest Winch, Chandler Davis, Jill Vickers, George Burt, Reid Scott, Ian Orenstein, Todd Hardy, Roger Lagasse, Norman Penner, Fred Tipping, Andrew Brewin, Abraham Albert Heaps, William Bryce, Claude Ellis, Clarence Fin...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=696094 ... Read more

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Chapters: Eric McCormack, Robert J. Sawyer, Gail Kim, Robert Gardner, Natalie Glebova, Liane Balaban, Tanya Huff, David Blatherwick, Cathy Crowe, Edward Burtynsky, Heather Mallick, Nia Vardalos, Porntip Nakhirunkanok, Jamie Campbell, Tyler Stewart, Tonya Lee Williams, Hayden, Marco Brambilla, Zarqa Nawaz, Brian Stewart, Tony Parsons, Monita Rajpal, David James Elliott, Matt Campagna, Isadore Sharp, Anastasia 'Nat' Tubanos, J. Timothy Hunt, John L'Ecuyer, Adam Vaughan, Jason Jones, Michael Kennedy, Hannah Simone, Glen Baxter, Christie Blatchford, Marc Belanger, Maurice Godin, Omar Alghabra, Suhana Meharchand, Tanya Kim, Jessica Holmes, Paul Romanuk, Bruce Atherton Smith, John Downing, Tony Ianzelo, Guy Big, Liza Fromer, Natasha Fatah, Chris Turner, Alan Robinson, Klaus Woerner, Jaime Stein, George Lagogianes, Joan Donaldson, Walter Deakon, Alan Hamel, Milan Chvostek, Betty Thompson, Kevin Brauch, Jay Onrait, Paula Lemyre, Dave Randorf, Ted Barris, Josie Dye, Valerie Pringle, John Paskievich, Isobel Warren, Harry Black, Vik Adhopia, Ramona Persaud, Namugenyi Kiwanuka, Michelle Nolden, Bill Haugland, Beatrice Politi, Alison Smith, Laurie Hibberd, Fabrice Taylor, Farah Nasser, Martine Gaillard, Marcia MacMillan, Anne-Marie Sweeney, Sharon Navarro, Mirosław Baszak, Martin Gero, Paul Chato, Michael Friscolanti, Holly Horton, Eric Sorensen, Sean Mallen, Michael Landsberg, Nil Köksal, Fred Pletsch, Tom Kennedy, Laura Di Battista, Jacqueline Milczarek, Dave Barrow, Suzanne Leonard, Carol Anne Meehan, Rick Brace, Joe Motiki,. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 321. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Eric James McCormack (born April 18, 1963) is a Canadian-American actor, musician, writer and producer. Born in Toronto, he began his acting career performing in school plays at Stephen Leacock Collegiate ...http://booksllc.net/?id=696094 ... Read more

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Chapters: Len Cariou, Eric Mccormack, Yvonne de Carlo, Martin Short, Deborah Cox, Garou, Miquel Brown, Beatrice Lillie, Hershey Felder, Patsy Gallant, Bruno Pelletier, Edmund Hockridge, Joanna Gleason, Kyle Riabko, Madeleine Sherwood, Louise Pitre, Dorothy Collins, Denis Simpson, Caitlynne Medrek, Rebecca Caine, Jonathan Monro, Dodi Protero, Nancy Dolman, Elicia Mackenzie, Tim Howar, Maurice Godin, Daniel Massey, Dave Moffatt, Jeff Hyslop, Louise Forestier, Tajja Isen, Marie Denise Pelletier, Allyn Ann Mclerie, Shelton Brooks, Steffi Didomenicantonio, Ed Evanko, Abby Zotz, Dale R. Miller, Dinah Christie, Nathan Mcleod, Claude Dubois, Lollie Alexi Devereaux, Lindsay Thomas, Paul Hecht, Kareena Dainty, Gilles Valiquette, Allen Kearns, Guylaine Guy, Alison Smyth, Marie Carmen, Mary Lou Farrell, Ramona Gilmour-Darling, Rejean Cournoyer, Ranee Lee, Victoria Hopper, Daniel Boucher, Ma-Anne Dionisio, Clyde Alves, Robert Marien. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 232. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Eric James McCormack (born April 18, 1963) is a Canadian-American actor, musician, writer and producer. Born in Toronto, he began his acting career performing in school plays at Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute High School. He left Ryerson University in 1985, in order to accept a position with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where he spent five years performing in numerous play productions. For much of the late 1990s, he lived in Los Angeles and had minor roles. He made his feature film debut in the 1992 science fiction The Lost World. McCormack appeared in multiple television series roles, including Top Cops, Street Justice, Lovesome Dove: The Series, Townies, and Ally McBeal. McCormack later gained worldwide recognition for playing Will Truman in the American sitcom Will ... Read more

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Chapters: Eric Mccormack, Robbi Chong, Daniel Heath Justice. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 27. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Eric James McCormack (born April 18, 1963) is a Canadian-American actor, musician, writer and producer. Born in Toronto, he began his acting career performing in school plays at Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute High School. He left Ryerson University in 1985, in order to accept a position with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where he spent five years performing in numerous play productions. For much of the late 1990s, he lived in Los Angeles and had minor roles. He made his feature film debut in the 1992 science fiction The Lost World. McCormack appeared in multiple television series roles, including Top Cops, Street Justice, Lovesome Dove: The Series, Townies, and Ally McBeal. McCormack later gained worldwide recognition for playing Will Truman in the American sitcom Will ... Read more

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Publication date: 1958Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Amazing stories, hard to believe they've been nearly forgotten
Eric McCormack has been one of my favourite authors for a long time. Every summer when I go back to Japan I re-read his First Blast of the Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment of Women, which (for superstitious reasons) I won't bring back to Singapore with me. I keep a copy of Inspecting The Vaults (which generously contains his first novel The Paradise Motel) with me here in Singapore and re-read it every so often. I still remember lying out on the field in front of the University of Waterloo Community Centre in 1989 as a university student reading the hardcover of The Paradise Motel (I'd splurged on it - I didn't have much money in those days, of course, but as a new release the book was only available in hardcover) as I waited for my bus home for the weekend, and what a marvelous feeling it gave me.

Re-reading it now, I see that the stories aren't as brilliant as I may have thought - they are extremely well written, and McCormack is an immaculate stylist, but there is a bit of thematic repetition, a morbid fascination with bitter ends, and superfluous robotic sexuality. I can see that McCormack is a consummate storyteller, just like so many of his characters, and he was born in Scotland but lives in Waterloo, like so many of his characters, and he (as an academic) likes to read, like so many of his characters. I think that this is a joke that Eric is playing on us, and it's fantastic, even if it is repetitive.

As you read the stories, you can tell that he's having a great time writing, pushing us one way and another with his stories, each of which he tries to make as different as can be (and yet never really succeeding - but don't all great authors need to have a canon of like-themed books? McCormack is convinced, even if I am not).

The book that I have covers both Inspecting the Vaults and The Paradise Motel.

Inspecting the Vaults contains 21 stories and an exceedingly well-written introduction, where McCormack traces his life story, as he does with so many of his characters, from Scotland to Canada. The introduction is only three pages long, but it is better than nearly any of the fascinating stories in this collection. Starting off with a fantasy about a prisoner in a gulag, a voracious reader, who is kept in the dark for 23 hours and 59 minutes a day. For one minute, the guards turn on the lights - and he has an opportunity to read. The tale then goes into journeys, academia, and ideas. McCormack takes his existence for granted but wonders what book he's reading. He then recounts an anecdote of reading as a youth (a letter arrived in the village, the first one ever, and was treated as an amazing object by all of the villagers) and then his arrival from dreary, slag-heap riddled mining villages Scotland to wide-open Canada ("one of the last of the good places"), and its many possibilities. These are the themes of his stories, and he mentions his love and interest in words and their power.

One of his passages about Canada is particularly enjoyable for anyone who's ever been there or lived there, but is also telling about the way McCormack writes and thinks:

Eventually, in the Winnipeg winter of 1966, less pleasant realities struck. For the first time, my bare eyeballs felt the pain caused by freezing cold air. The hairs in my nose turned into wire. And that wineter, my bood Scottish overcoat, with its foam rubber lining, actually split in halves, right down the join at the back, when I took it off. It lay there ont he floor like the broken shell of a dead sea-creature. I think now I was shedding more than just a Scottish coat that day.

Inspecting the Vaults starts off with its title story, about the vault inspector in a remote area in some future (or past) dictatorship, where they lock up individuals for their strange and grotesque passions, not for any sort of real crime (although real criminals are also locked up there). In a simple fashion, the narrator inspector goes around all of the vaults, describes the vaultkeepers and the inmates, and recounts the strange, magical reasons that they are being interred. "The Fragment" is an academic mystery, where the narrator unearths the real meaning behind a fragment of a passage from Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, telling in the process the tale of freakish religious devotion (and its consequences) in a typically gory and violent manner.

"Sad Stories of Patagonia" is a 15-page tale that is probably the lynchpin of all of McCormack's writing; it tells the tale of explorers in Patagonia on a futile quest for a living dinosaur, gathered at the end of the day around the campfire telling tales of tragedy. Two get their turn before Amos Mackenzie speaks up and tells of a tale of family horror from his hometown. The tale, and McCormack's use of the tale to peel concepts of truth and reality, crops up again and again in his work. In fact, the search for information of the fate of Amos and his three siblings becomes the centre-point of The Paradise Motel, but the tale is also told in passing in all of his subsequent novels (when it crops up, as it always will, it begins to feel like family).

"Eckhardt at a Window" is a fascinating tale of a murder mystery - or was there really a murder? - and the undependability of information. "The One-Legged Men" is the very straight-forward tale tale of a mining disaster; the one-legged men are another recurring motif in McCormack's writing, and they make their first appearance here. "Knox Abroad" is a piece of pseudo-history, recounting John Knox's journeys, and the fantasy of how he would have behaved had he visited the New World. There is humour, violence, and all of the grotesque foibles of medieval life in an age of ignorance that arrogantly pretended knowledge. "Edward and Georgina" is about a brother and a sister that live together, told from the point of view of outside observers. What's their story? Why has neither of them married? And why are they never seen together? "Captain Joe" is the metaphysical tale of a boy who went to sleep one day and woke up as a 60-year-old man.

"The Swath" is perhaps the best-written, amazing, and amusing tales in the collections. It reads more like straight reporting, but it tells a bizarre, magical tale, describing a gigantic trench 300 metres wide and 100 metres deep that suddenly appears in the earth; all that rock and dirt, and everything that is built on it, simply disappears. The swath moves around the earth, reconnecting to itself, and then it fills itself back in, all in the space of 24 hours. It's an exciting tale, and McCormack recounts tales of the countries that it moves through, what happens to the oceans, and about the human reaction to it (unbelievable positive, actually). But no explanation is ever given; none is needed.

"Festival" is probably the story I like the least - I find its violence superfluous and unnecessary. "No Country For Old Men" (which, like the Cormac McCarthy book, comes from a line in the poem "Sailing To Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats), about World War I memories, is as short as it is hard to penetrate. "A Train of Gardens" comes in two parts, one as a bit of anthropology in the jungles of South America and other misadventures, while also setting up the seven-coach train of gardens. The second part of the story tells of the adventures inside the world of those garden train coaches. It is a cryptic and excitingly strange tale which, like all of McCormack's tales, has no real resolution. "The Hobby" is a gorgeous, clever, short tale of a train hobbyist who rents a room in the basement of a family in rural Canada, and what he gets up to. The last line of the story is devastating. "One Picture of Trotsky" is just that, while "Lusawort's Meditation" is the strange tale of a man who remembers the death of a friend, while "Anyhow in a Corner" is a peculiar interview with an author who is supported by a rich patron, and his musings on his condition and on the life of Sir Walter Scott. "A Long Day On The Town" is another tour-de-force tale, similar to the title tale, where the life stories of multiple individuals are tied together somehow, each of them fascinating. Check out the poet who became an anarchist who became a living bomb who became a stool pigeon who becomes a hobo. They, like the narrator, all end up in The Town. It makes me think of an HP Lovecraft story, such as "Shadows Over Inssmouth", but much more to the point. "Twins" is the amazing tale of twins born in the same body, a concept covered by Stephen King in "The Dark Half", but here it's given the Eric McCormack treatment, which is just as dark, but of course it's also very... different. "The Fugue" is an amazing tale of a crime told from three points of view - that of the unsuspecting victim, the killer, and the police detective rushing to prevent the crime. Brilliant.

The Paradise Motel is a novel of 205 pages. It starts off with a tale of narrator Ezra Stevenson, his parents, and the return of his long-lost grandfather. Where did he go? Why did he abandon his family? And why did he only come back to die? The drama is incredible in this little short story within a novel (the novel contains at least a dozen tales that could stand on their own). Stevenson travels the world researching the fates of Esther, Zachary, Rachel and Amos McKenzie, their first initials making up his own first name, Ezra. He comes close to tracking all of them down, but something is wrong. By the end, there is no resolution, but it's all still a great story. ... Read more