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The ensuing chapters take place at intervals of several years until he reaches his forties and buries each of his parents within two years. Each passage from his growing up evokes its era. Most are written in the first person, but the voice switches to the third mim know if the nuns try to teach him anything besides piano. The lessons are a struggle, but the secret world inside the priory fascinates. After a particularly tearful session, he watches as four sisters have a snowball fight in the courtyard. His father comes to pick him up and declares no more lessons. and Frank watches the snow fall as they drive home _| closed my eyes and felt the rest of my life come rushing toward me . . and | knew with a shiver approaching wonder that all of it would be both more terrible and more wondrous than anyâ€" thing | d ever been told before That image of the first encounter with the piano keys reminded me of the opening chapter of a first novel just out this month, entitled Skating in the Dark. Frank is seven in 1951 when his mother decides it would be nice to have music in the house and sends him off to the local convent for piano lessons His father is against it, warning him to let She goes on to suggest that reading provides a bndge. "a way of understanding the world and understanding myself through both the unknown and the everyday."" Thus books provide the simpâ€" lest way of passing on chunks of ourselves to our children. She (and 1) would be completely satisfied if her children grew up to regard decorating as consisting mostly of building enough bookshelves Anna Quindlen writes an opâ€"ed column in the New York Times. (Her first novel, Object Lessons, was reviewed in this space on June 19th). Recently she wrote about the joys of parenting via the books she shares with her eldest child. She quotes the English novelist Anita Brookner who claims that part of growing up and becoming civilized, means losing the capacity to grieve or to rage as passionately as a child does. For Quindlen, the loss is retrievable: To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surtace of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful ‘ PAGE 16 â€" WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY Growing up with books Presented in «o operation with the l mversity of Waterioo \\ MloktO() ht 91c 9} the THE CITY OF PRESENTS , SEPTEMBER 25, 1991 Blyth Festival‘s CORNFLOWER BLUE Tickets at the City of Waterioo Box Office SEASON OPENER! Chuck Erion is a Waterioo bookseller and freeâ€" lance writer Fine writing, with sparse precision, glimpses of a life that eventually reveal a pattern and a meaning. Books like this prove that reading, as Quindien notes, is life unwrapping itself, to both children and soâ€"called grownâ€"ups. Skating in the Dark, David Michael Kaplan, Panthâ€" eon, $25.00 Single Tickets On Sale September 9 Prices: Adults $22.00 Students/Seniors $19.00 In the final chapter he‘s awoken by a phone call in the middle of the night. A new acquaintance, Allie, has driven away from her sister‘s place and gotten lost on the dark country roads. Frank manages to restore her courage with a story about skating across thin ice in the dark. The story he knows is a le but it felt real, ‘"as if fantasy and fear could become memory, just by imagining . strongly enough, and by telling it to someone.‘‘ Suddenly he knows that his life is redeemable ‘‘if only because it could become a story to tell, to help someone in the night. Finally in the penultimate chapter, after his parents have died, his wife has left him, none of his childhood homes are availabe to him, he realizes that he has run from fear of humiliation in practically every encounter in his life. For once he returns to challenge a bully who damaged his sports car. Finally by not caring whether he‘ll get hurt, he overcomes his fear and stops running away. person in the title chapter wherein Frank and his wife break into his parent‘s cottage in the middle of winter and go skating across the frozen lake in the dark. The narrative is laden with symbolic landâ€" mines, set to go off at later periods in Frank‘s life. Friday, October 4 8:00 p.m. [510 Duton Oe w of Weben Tickets at the door or from the Waterion Showtime Box Office 747â€"8765 >** IMPROV CC COMEDY ZVER \> . Thurs., Sept 26 8pm Wing 404 R.CAF. Rotary Adult Cantre THEARE sPORIS Take #9 Lakeshore Bus to Albert & Weber 6 Waterloo City € Teama tro Waterico and Toronis For details call 747â€"8765 Box Office, 100 Rewin. Blyth Festival Don Harron & Catheri Ballet Jorgen Second City Touring C and more .. with ADULT sHOwWs Subscription Series available till Friday, October 4 entre (747 8768 $5 i ndictlh. 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