SOURCE: Goldman, Marlene. “A Book of Mornings.” Canadian Literature 159 (winter 1998): 185-86.

In the following review of Taken, Goldman commends the novel's fragmented narrative structure but finds shortcomings in its “disappointing and heavy handed” conclusion.

Marlatt's latest novel, Taken, reads as a companion piece to Ana Historic. Both works are lyrical, densely imagistic ghost stories, composed by daughters desperate to communicate with the dead. As the narrator explains, this is “a book of mornings.” In keeping with the play on words, the novel both records the beauty of morning, “that indistinct time” which greets the narrator each day, and engages in mourning, in its exploration of “the loss of all that envelops us, pre-dates us. Post-dates us, too.” Here, as in Ana Historic, the loss of the mother forms the abyss which swallows up all subsequent losses. This primary absence and the struggle to recapture what has been taken...