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The Heart is its Own Reason
by Natalee Caple
Insomniac Press, 1998.

Natalee Caple's debut collection gathers for display enough wackos, freaks other assorted odd-balls to stack something even wilder than your standard Ontario Gothic carnival. Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley and Robertson Davies have mined this territory before, though perhaps without the post-modern self-consciousness it's hard not to bring to Caple's spooky tales. The collection opens with a paedophile and closes with a caged woman. Are these metaphors for our crazy age? The truth is these Gothic archetypes have been around 200 years, since about the time some Europeans began experimenting with ideas like liberty, equality, fraternity and something that would later be called Modernism. Caple steps into a deep stream with her debut and handles the currents well. Her sentences are taut, muscular; her paragraphs aware of their acoustics. Fine writing in a book nicely designed (not a first for Insomniac Press!).