I think Constance Beresford-Howe deserves to be much better known as a Canadian writer. She is an astute observer of people and understands that everyone, from the cleaner to the school director, has their own thoughts and desires and foibles.

This book is set in a college in Toronto called Simcoe. Beresford-Howe taught at McGill and Ryerson for many years and although she says in her dedication to her Ryerson colleagues that none of them are depicted on these pages, surely some of their attitudes and idiosyncracies made it through to her writing.

The college is a circular twenty story high rise and features a quote from Dante's Inferno at the entrance. Imogen Hughes, English teacher, thinks the geography of the school is like Dante's Hell only upside-down. On the ground floor is Incontinence (six washrooms), Lust and Gluttony (the cafeteria) but the really big vices are on the top floors: Thievery, Flattery and Hypocrisy with traitors at the very top.

On a fall night, as a thunderstorm cuts the electricity to the school (and the rest of the downtown), the various characters face their personal difficulties and, if not precisely triumph over them, at least rise up a few notches on the ladder out of perdition. Very satisfying. ( )

I was very disappointed by this book. It was the 4th Constance Beresford Howe book that I read in a month and definitely my least favourite. Her style of writing, normally easily readable and flowing, is chopped into short sections and jumps to another scene before accomplishing anything in the first. The narration jumps from one character to the next, leaving the reader with several flat characters and only really one partially well developed character. If this book is any indication of Beresford-Howe's later books, I have no desire to read more. ( )