The Sunday Oregonian

January 31, 2022

“‘The Reconstruction’ lives up to the fuss and sets Casper up as one of the brightest new literary talents in Canada.”—Jeff Baker

January 29, 1997

Review by Jeff Baker

Casper, a young writer from Vancouver, British Columbia, conducted her own auction for Canadian rights to this, her first novel. The daring move paid off with an offer from Penguin Books in Toronto, excellent reviews from Canada and eventual publication in the United States. “The Reconstruction” lives up to the fuss and sets Casper up as one of the brightest new literary talents in Canada. It is a multilayered story about a depressed sculptor who needs major dental surgery at the same time she is hired by a museum to build a model of Lucy, the “missing link” between man and primate. The lives of the sculptor and Lucy overlap in clever ways and raise questions about evolution, for one person and all mankind.

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