The Players

by Margaret Sweatman

Sweatman, Margaret

329 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Margaret Sweatman is a novelist, playwright, and lyricist. She teaches literature and creative writing and performs with the Broken Songs Band. Her three previous novels garnered Sweatman the McNally Robinson Prize for the Manitoba Book of the Year, the John Hirsch Award for the most promising Manitoba writer, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Award. She has also won a Genie for the song "When Wintertime" which she co-wrote with her husband Glenn Buhr for the film, Seven Times Lucky. She was born in Winnipeg where now makes her home.

Reviews

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its base, The Players is about a woman making her way through a universe ruled by men, doing whatever it takes to survive, which makes Lilly as much an explorer/adventurer as Des Groseilliers and Radisson. Lilly is the main 'player' in The Players, but in a way, all the characters are only acting their parts to achieve their true desires. The novel is also about the death of entire worlds, whole societies, replacing them with a new one, that of 'civilization.' As the explorers rue, "Civilization will seep into everything, it will mimic, steal, atom by atom, yes, like that, so that nothing evermore will be free of falsity." In The Players, the entire world is being slowly transformed, becoming an actor as well, disguising its feral nature underneath the trappings of enlightenment.

Read the rest of the review here.

[Leanne Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret is an amazing and accomplished story teller. She's used the research available as well as a rich imagination to concoct a memorable story. I shall have Lilly Cole in my head for some time. But rather than the plot, it's the writing that makes this a standout piece of literature.

[James Findley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book. It takes some work to read as the language and characterization is unusual but it is worth the effort.

[Wendy Hearder-moan]

Did not finish. Gave it two tries, but couldn’t get into it.