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Drama Canadian

Listen to the Wind

by (author) James Reaney

Publisher
Talonbooks
Initial publish date
Jan 1972
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780889220027
    Publish Date
    Jan 1972
    List Price
    $17.95

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Description

In a Perth County farmhouse some time during the 1930s, a boy named Owen decides to spend the summer putting on plays with the help of his cousins, his grown-up relatives and the neighbourhood children. One of the plays they put on is their adaptation of a Victorian novel, The Saga of Caresfoot Court. In James Reaney’s Listen to the Wind, we watch a double story unfold: we see Owen fighting illness and trying to get his parents back together again; and we see Angela Caresfoot treading her way through a world of evil manor-houses and sinister Lady Eldreds. The two stories intertwine and illuminate each other.

About the author

James Reaney was born on a farm in South Easthope near Stratford, Ontario in 1926. He has won the Governor General's Award three times for his poetry, though he is perhaps better-known as a playwright, especially for his landmark Donnelly trilogy (1974-75). Reaney's theatrical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass returned to the stage at Stratford in the summer of 1996.

His work includes: The Red Heart, poems, 1949; A Suit of Nettles, poems, 1958; Twelve Letters to a Small Town, poems, 1962; The Killdeer & Other Plays, drama, 1962; Colours in the Dark, drama, 1969; Collected Poems, 1972; Listen to the Wind, drama, 1972; The Donnellys, a trilogy of plays, 1974-75; Baldoon (with C.H. Gervais), 1976; The Boy With an R in His Hand, young adult, 1980; Take the Big Picture, young adult, 1986; Alice Through the Looking-Glass, stage adaptation, 1994. James Reaney died in 2008.

James Reaney's profile page

Editorial Reviews

“Keeps reminding us that the way through our world of sickness and breakdown is play.”
Profiles in Canadian Drama

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