Robert Kroetsch's But We Are The Exiles [shows no absence of emotional or imaginative structure]. Kroetsch has thought deeply about his characters and his theme, trying to merge them symbolically in a sort of Virginia Woolf way. Peter Guy is running away from a soured love affair, and chooses to run by sailing up and down the Mackenzie River as a pilot. Hornyak, the man who stole his woman, has now bought the boat on which he serves and, in a vengeful moment, Peter consciously arranges for Hornyak's accidental death…. (p. 47)

[An] amazing amount of corroborative detail gives verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. For though Kroetsch knows his Arctic, the river, the boats and the men, and has lived a long time in the setting he so vividly describes, he is also an academic…. So he imposes layer after layer of symbolism on his basic...