THE FENCEPOST CHRONICLES

by W.P. Kinsella ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 1987

Best known for his novel Shoeless Joe (1982), the Canadian Kinsella's seventh story-collection about the Cree Indians of Hobbema, Alberta, is very much the same mixture as before: comic capers and whimsical scares, delivered with a studied folksiness and a low rumble of anger at the authorities. Also familiar from earlier collections will be Frank Fencepost, feckless adventurer and irresistible ladies' man, and his unobtrusive buddy, writer/narrator Silas Ermineskin. ""Me and Frank aren't campers or hunters or trackers. We like hotel rooms, Kentucky Fried Chicken, video games, riding in taxis, and electric guitars."" Here, too, is the 400-pound medicine lady, Mad Etta, who plays the key role in four of these 13 stories; when Kinsella's comic inventiveness flags, he uses Etta for a cheap laugh, as when she is mistaken for a stranded whale on a Vancouver beach. The enemies here are the venal Chief Tom and his cronies; the RCMP (not the Mounties, please), who are both mean and dumb (a female cop's project to stamp out home-brew on the reserve is deftly foiled); and the Ottawa bureaucrats (""Beef' shows what happens when an Indian request for 400 cattle is misread in Ottawa as 4,000). Wilder flights of fancy have the Indians buying a Montana baseball team from some Mafia types (to discover too late it has lost its affiliation), and Frank and Silas stumbling into the Queen's bedroom in Buckingham Palace, whither Etta is later invited for tea (""Just women talk""). Kinsella doesn't seem to be pushing himself here. The result is minor work that sometimes has a weak charm, but too often fades away to a Cheshire cat's grin.

Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION