The Sun and the Moon and Other Fictions

"P.K. Page is well-known as a poet—her most recent collection is Cry Ararat—but aside from a few stories, notably "The Green Birds", her fiction has been overlooked. Certainly few people have ever seen her novel THE SUN AND THE MOON published by Macmillan in 1944 under the pseudonym "Judith Cape", although it is a book of great distinction. The plot might have come from Poe or Hawthorne; it concerns a young girl who gradually realizes she is destroying the soul of the man she loves. Her unwanted vampiristic powers are closely identified with the Canadian landscape itself: the cold lakes and the ocean are linked with her sexuality in several powerful scenes as she finds herself invading and taking over her lover's being. They marry, and in a chilling conclusion, the author brilliantly ends a symbolic tale of the closeness of love and death. There is a weird, lyrical beauty to the prose in Page's novel. Along with the other short fiction included in this collection, it reaffirms her stature as a Canadian stylist of unusual distinction. Page's fiction is a "find" indeed, and Anansi is proud to reprint it as their first FOUND BOOK."--