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Canadian Authors - General fiction - |
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The Rules of Engagement |
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 The Rules of Engagement byCatherine Bush Harper Collins Canada 300 pages, August 2000 ISBN 0374252807 Reviewed by Devorah Stone Arcadia Hearne put violence and war into a container. She studied them in the same way a scientist might study bugs. Her own life was contained in another jar. Geographical distances and time neatly separated her former lover and ex- husband. Her past was in Canada and her present in England. When she ran away from her home to London, she didn't tell her parents where she was and called them from pay phones. It was all neat and tidy. She pretended her study of war was detached from her life but it wasn't. Violence isn't a separate intellectual abstraction. Eventually the containers broke and their contents mingled. Her sister Lux tracks her down and asks her for a favor. Could she deliver a package to a Somalia refugee? Intrigued, she does it. She tracks down a Somalia singer and hands her the package. There she meets a man who challenges all the foundations of her life. Amir understands war and its ramifications intimately. Amir helps the victims of war escape. Arcadia goes back home to Toronto where she confronts and attempts to resolve the event that forced her to become an emotional refugee. Two young men fought a duel over her. Unable to handle the guilt, she ran away. Obsessed with the intellectual study of duels, she studied all the rules and practices. She expanded her interest in duels to war. Her specialty - intervention - when should another nation intervene in a conflict? The question is also a personal one. Should she have intervened to stop the duel she was responsible for? The Rules of Engagement explores the personal and intellectual life of Arcadia Hearne and uses it as a metaphor for many people who watch the news, read the reports and do little to stop the violence. The Rules of Engagement is an ironic title because there are no rules in war or in matters of the heart. In the end, Arcadia learns she can't just sit and observe. An intellectually stimulating work of fiction written in a straight forward style. |
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