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literary "Lucy." humanity's ancestral link to the primate world. The job comes at a time when Margaret is going through a painful divorce after a ten-year, mostly unhappy, marriage. She is financially and emotionally insecure and her mouth is full of abscessing teeth she can't afford to fix. The book opens with Margaret in the dentist's chair. Casper's keen description put me in the dental chair. I winced when "the clamp gripped the tooth, then slipped down slightly onto her gums so the serrated metal clamped the soft tissue." I cringed when "Dr. Adin snipped a small hole in the middle of a black latex dam. He stretched this opening over her tooth and pushed down, driving the edge of the clamp further into her gums." Ugh! Throughout the novel. Casper successfully took me along on Margaret's journeys to the dentist and the equally painful revisitations of her marriage with a loveless man and childhood with a suicidal mother. Margaret's downhill slides into paralyzed depression clearly illustrate the logical path one travels in order to arrive at a place where self-neglect and suicide are as natural as going to sleep when tired. One morning, Margaret wakes up feeling "more calm" and a bit curious to know who has been phoning her. She listens to her messages on the answering machine. The first is from her dentist: she missed an appointment and will have to pay for his time as she gave no notice. Next, a bank clerk tells her she's missed a mortgage payment. Finally, her exhusband leaves a brusque message instructing her to call him back... "She stood unable to move, even to turn the volume back down on the answering-machine. unable to phone the dentist's office, or the bank. Minutes slipped away and she couldn't move to stop them, to mark them with an action, to give them any boundaries, any beginnings or ends. She'd lost her bearings. She no longer knew where she was in time. It was washing over her. carrying her to oblivion and she couldn't move..." Casper's descriptive talents do not. however, have any limits in terms of the use of anatomical language. The terms she uses to describe the reconstruction of Lucy are so technical that some passages read like a medical textbook. "She'd made an interosseous membrane out of latex to join the radius and ulna. Some of the hand muscles were continuations of arm muscles so she'd worked first attaching the muscles of the forearm. She formed the flexor profundis digitorum. which was a tricky one because it divided into four tendons that attached to the tip of each finger." Some of the descriptions also lead to heavy-handed symbolism. The reconstruction of Lucy is symbolic enough to point out Margaret is reconstructing her life at the same time; it's not necessary to have the seasons match this rebirthing with the arrival of spring, to have Margaret begin making her best sculptures since art school and to have Margaret plant flowers in her garden and to have Margaret's dental work begin with her neglected, rotting teeth and end with them being "good as new." And. the novel ending with the sun rising and illuminating Margaret's garden was definitely more than enough symbolism. I got the message. All said, this book is a good read and I look forward to Casper's next book. I also doubt if Casper will ever throw on dark glasses and enter libraries intent on hiding copies of The Reconstruction.^ Claudia Casper, author THE R E C O N S T R U C T ! * of The Reconstruction. Photo: Michael de Sadeleer V l.iLidi.1 Casper. 39 and originally from Toronto, lives in North Vancouver with her husband and four-year-old son (and is expecting another child this April). Casper holds a BA in literature from the University of Toronto and is an avid fan of Canadian fiction; her favourite authors include Margaret Atwood. Alice Munro. Michael Ondatjee. Audrey Thomas and Maureen Moore. One of her favourite books she read recently is Pat Barker's The Ghost Road, which won the 1995 Booker Prize. Casper started her work on The Reconstruction five years ago. Shereceiveda Canada Council "Explorations" grant which enabled her to travel to Washington. D.C.. and meet someone who creates anatomically layered reconstructions for museums. "Going there really helped me focus what the book was going to be about," said Casper. Casper's experience of finding a publisher was a rare one in today's publishing industry. She submitted her book to one publisher who rejected her. Not so unusual, but, she then sent out queries to six publishers: all six showed interest, including: Penguin. Douglas and Mclntyre and Random House. "I realize this is highly unusual." says Casper, "I was prepared for lots of rejection." Research is underway for Casper's next novel, but she's nto revealing her topic. Readers can only hope she won't delve into more painful dental experiences. Casper does note. "I did spare readers a description of gum surgery^"