THE SECRET KINGDOM: INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CANADIAN CHARACTER Dominique Clift Toronto, McClelland and Stcwart, 1989. 240pp, cloth, $29.95 ISBN 0-7710-2161-5. CIP Grades 11 and up/Ages 15 and up Reviewed by Howard Hurt. Volume 17 Number 5 1989 September The Secret Kingdom, which first appeared in French as Le Pays Insoupsonne, is a very personal and very subjective view of Canada by a bilingual nationalist reflecting on his thirty years of political journalism. However, it is in no way a personal reminiscence. Rather, it is an attempt to psychoanalyze the collective Cana­dian mind by examining what the author perceives as consistent literary, religious, ethnic, and political be­haviour. Clift has built a career reporting the words and deeds of politicians but what has obviously come to fascinate him more than anything else is the psyche of a population that has demanded those "symbolic" speeches and policies. Clift is an optimist who believes that our image of Canada as a fragile and conflict-rid den country is finally passing and that we are close to developing real independence. We have our own Supreme Court and a Canadian Governor General. Ultra-montanism has vanished from Quebec. The Constitution has been repatriated. Unfortunately, he is ambiguous about the meaning of the free trade debate and makes no mention of multiculturalism, native rights, feminism, senior citizen activism or any of the other new divisions revolving about the Meech Lake controversy. It remains to be seen if Clift is overly sanguine about arriving at a working national identity. Howard Hurt, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.