Reviews (Page 3)

Reviews (Page 3) McGill University

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ALUMNI QUARTERLY - winter 2008
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Home > McGill News > 2001 > Winter 2001-2002 > Reviews > Reviews (Page 3)

Waltzing the Tango: Confessions of an Out-of-Step Boomer, Hounslow Press, 2001, $22.99, by Gabrielle Bauer, BSc'78, BMus'83.


The title pretty much says it all. Bauer is a really late bloomer who finds her niche after years of missteps. Programmed by her mother, a Holocaust survivor, to "succeed" in her personal and professional life, Bauer instead spends years misrepresenting herself to be hired for a string of dead-end jobs, and marrying someone even she knew was wrong for her. Over and over she finds herself "up against that familiar wall on which was inscribed, 'This ain't it, babe.'" After the death of her mother, "everything seemed possible." Eventually, Bauer begins to question the advantage of lying about herself, and then meets a man through a dating service who had "an unconditional policy of truth-telling.... Somewhere during our courtship, I lost my ability to lie my way to a job." He became her second husband, and she fulfilled her "babylust" and her destiny to become a writer. In fact, what makes Waltzing the Tango so engaging is Bauer's honesty. We pull for her through depression, divorce and just plain dumb decisions. Her observations are sharp and funny, without a whiff of self-pity. She writes of her "Wonderbread" life versus her mother's "dark rye," and as a music teacher to a class of four-year-olds, she laments the lack of mental down time, when she "could check out of Hotel Here and lose myself in thought." A most enjoyable book.

Toronto: Fun Places, Second Edition, Word of Mouth Production, 2001, $19.95, by Nathalie Prézeau, MBA'91.


Back in the days of the good old Montreal-Toronto rivalry, a cynical Montrealer may have ventured that a book entitled Toronto: Fun Places would by necessity be a pretty slim volume indeed. But even Montrealers these days will admit that Hogtown is not all Bay Street bankers and lawyers, and smartly dressed women racing off to work in their Nike cross-trainers. So proves former Montrealer Nathalie Prézeau by packing a huge amount of information into almost 400 pages for the new edition of this acclaimed guide to family fun in Southern Ontario. With sections on arts, animals, holiday themes, festivals, amusement parks, museums and more, there's enough here to exhaust your entire family for generations to come. The research for the book comprises six years of fun seeking by Prézeau and her own family. With many photos, maps, top ten lists and a huge number of suggested outings, this surely must be the definitive guide to the area.

Forgotten Places In The North, Mosaic Press, 2001, $18, by S. R. Gage, BA'67.


Growing out of author Sandy Gage's fieldwork photographing old architecture in the Canadian North, this book looks at heritage structures that have withstood the ravages of nature and time, in a land where abandoned buildings would often be used for fuel or cannibalized for other buildings. There are few physical traces left of history in this harsh territory, but Gage manages to examine three of them. York Factory was a key Hudson's Bay Company outpost from its construction in 1830 and its huge white depot still remains on the shore of Hudson's Bay. Gage also visits Herschel Island in the Beaufort Sea and the abandoned settlement of 19th-century Yankee whalers. The third section of the book looks at the Mid-Canada Line, a 1950s Cold War radar detection system intended to keep out Soviet bombers and known early on as the "McGill Fence" because of its use of Doppler radar developed by McGill professor G. A. Woonton. Gage's images of the abandoned "Site 415" radar station are spooky, with the huge radar screens making the place resemble some ghostly drive-in theatre. The photos for the book were taken with a large format, five-by-seven-inch view camera and are striking, though we are tantalized by the few reproduced in this volume -- more of these images would have been nice.

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