Imagine my surprise when I saw that Margaret Visser was up for the Writers’ Trust Award for her latest book, The Gift of Thanks. She received stellar reviews in the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s, but not from Quill & Quire.
The Gift of Thanks is both an enlightening and frustrating read. As befitting a former classics professor, the strongest parts of the book are the explorations of Greek mythology. These sections are far superior to the plodding transactional analysis of why we give gifts. The lack of insight into other religions is also troubling; Visser chooses only those belief systems that can act as a foil to her idea of gratitude. Even Judaism is relegated to the Old Testament, as if the religion had no new intellectual developments post-Jesus!
Read more at Quill & Quire’s website.
Piali Roy 