Paul Wilson

“These are true stories told from memory,” John le Carré writes in his introduction to this wide-ranging collection of personal anecdotes drawn from a lifetime of living and writing. But, he cautions, “was there ever such a thing as pure memory? I doubt it. Even when we convince ourselves that we’re being dispassionate, sticking to the bald facts with no self-serving decorations or…

This little book—short enough to be read at a single sitting, small enough to fit into one’s jacket pocket—has big ambitions. It is really three essays in one: a manifesto announcing an ecologically based view of Western Canadian history, a lament for a lost community and advice on how to resist the forces of “hyper-development,” the rapid urbanization of once cosy rural mountain…