Beyond Forget

This is a travel book about the prairies of Canada, an area often misrepresented as being flat and featureless. Abley's journey takes him from Saskatoon and the tiny town of Forget (pronounced For-jay) through Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, and as the author discovered, the prairies is a region of surprising beauty, variety and eccentricity, in terms of both geography and inhabitants. "Beyond forget" takes the reader from the decayed brothels of Moose Jaw and deserted churches to the materialism of West Edmonton shopping mall; through the prairies' history and the words of its writers. Between the ages of six and twenty, Mark Abley lived on the Canadian prairies. A Rhodes scholar at St John's Oxford, he has written for "The New Statesman", "The Times Literary Supplement" and several Canadian papers .