A documentary-novel on contacts between Savages and French (with English and Dutch) in Canada. It has an exhaustive feel, as if he's put in every contact - whether or not you'd pick them for a novel. He does dives into people's heads for a page here and there, but otherwise, these figures from the Jesuit records seem to be written with an external or objective hand... a bit like a closely-observed documentary, more than a novel. Canada itself, savage Canada, is as real as if filmed, and I, who skip description unless of people, never did. He keeps to two sentences at a time anyhow, as I'd have description, except when a metaphor for human mood or airier things - and his can be that.

There's merry torture - the Indian Nations' art and practice with each other, before they get to Jesuits. In spite of the culture clashes, the Black Crows and the Savages are often strikingly alike. Sorry to those concerned. The Savages have a Feast of the Dead, gruesome to French eyes, tenderly significant to themselves. The Jesuits' baptism - which they only perform on the nearly-dead, to prevent the wickedness of backsliding - has them hover over those at last gasp with a ghastly persistence, and to Savage eyes they are very unhealthily obsessed with death.

Given how rude they are by each other's standards of courtesy and decency, it's a wonder either understands an utterance from the other side. But the book ends with Canadians, who can now be neither - every Canadian has both, in his/her history, inside.

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