Since Daisy Creek

Though this story is set in modern-day Canada, it seems to embrace the concerns and attitudes of an earlier timethe 1940s, perhapswhen Hemingway and the Lone Ranger instructed us in manly matters. Its protagonist, English professor Colin Dobbs, has entered middle age without such knowledge, until some atavistic urge causes him to take on the challenge of a bear hunt. Guided by a Stony Indian (whose way of saying ""hey-up'' in lieu of ``yes'' or ``no'' may make the reader growl), Dobbs grapples with a full-grown female grizzly who mauls him half to death. She is not the first of her sex to wound. Dobbs has been deserted by his wife, his daughter and his literary muse. When his daughter returns to nurse him, he begins the painful process of self-discovery that will eventually heal both body and spirit. Dobbs's awakening may have the opposite effect on readers. Marred by a prose style which hovers uneasily between the folksy and the pontifical, this novel by the author of Who Has Seen the Wind? makes its protagonist's life seem more like an exercise in self-help than an adventure in spiritual growth. December 16