There are better ways to enter de Lint’s Newford

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This article was published 13/03/2010 (6033 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Muse and Reverie

A Newford Collection

By Charles de Lint

Tor, 350 pages, $33

LIKE most long-working artists, Canadian fantasist Charles de Lint returns to certain characters and questions over and over again: creative protagonists damaged by childhood trauma; whether it’s better to act on a small scale or aim to change the world; if art can be a catalyst for transformation.

These themes, mixed with Celtic (and more recently, First Nations) mythic lore, crop up repeatedly in his work.

The sense of recurring patterns is strengthened in de Lint’s case because he also revisits a favourite setting. Newford is a fictional city at an indeterminate location somewhere in eastern North America with slums and heritage districts, outlying farmlands and hills, immigrant quarters and nearby First Nations reserves.

It’s also riddled with magic; some inhabitants ignore or reason it away, while others are drawn to the uncanny aspects of the place (or vice versa). For two decades, many of de Lint’s short stories and novels have been set in Newford’s varied neighbourhoods with an ensemble cast rotating through central and cameo roles.

Unfortunately, Muse and Reverie, a new collection of 13 previously published Newford stories, is not particularly strong overall. Many of the stories, while charming, are trifles written for forgettable themed anthologies, as holiday gift chapbooks, or in one case for an anthology of stories about Mike Mignola’s Hellboy character.

De Lint’s protagonists can often seem too alike, and a collection like this highlights those tendencies. After a couple of sensitive, artistic narrators all of them start to blur together. Even when de Lint tries to vary them by portraying some as teenaged, or Lebanese, or alcoholic, these superficial differences don’t disguise their inherent similarities.

The strongest stories are those in which de Lint uses the fantasy of being given a second chance — whether through some form of parallel universe, or a kind of reincarnation — to explore whether people can ever truly change or are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

A cautious optimist, he tends to declare that redemption is possible, although never without serious costs and consequences. One of the best pieces in the collection, the eerie almost-a-ghost story Riding Shotgun, perfectly incorporates these elements into a twisting Moebius strip narrative.

The book itself is a beautiful physical object with a gorgeous John Jude Palencar cover, but it’s a must-read only for de Lint completists who want to collect every cameo appearance of Jilly Coppercorn and other Newford inhabitants.

A new visitor to Newford would be better advised to start with Trader or Someplace to be Flying. Even a dedicated de Lint fan might consider time better spent rereading those books, or his first fine collection of Newford tales, Dreams Underfoot.

Danielle Pilon is a Winnipeg librarian who has often wished she could work at the Newford Public Library.