SOURCE: "Word Work," in Canadian Literature, No. 135, Winter, 1993, pp. 139-40.

In the following review, Ricou identifies characteristics of the narratives of The Wild Blue Yonder.

Audrey Thomas's typical form emerges in [The Wild Blue Yonder] as the sketch engagé/dégagé. She finds an impetus, a core story, in recent history, usually violent—the Hungerford massacre, Tiananmen Square, a generic newspaper story of a young murderer who preys on older women. In reshaping this story, Thomas expresses her strong social commitment, but more so her interest in how these public events affect the individual psyche and distort, however subtly, the narrative of the soul. Interrupting, disfiguring, and generally providing an alternative is the story that language tells itself. The metalinguistic element is not invariable, as in Daphne Marlatt, and seldom affects syntax, as in Gertrude Stein, but slides into parentheses (either actual or virtual) where homophones, morphemes, and...