In a review of Suzette Mayr’s Venous Hum, Mridula Chakraborty laments that the Alberta novel, which satirizes a number of assumptions concerning racial, sexual, regional, and national identities, is ruined by Mayr’s “unexpected, and completely unnecessary, horror pin” (36). Mayr indeed deploys vampires, cannibals, and undead people in this novel, and while Chakraborty believes that the intervention of these monstrous figures prevents the full development of the satire, I argue that Mayr’s use of magic realism intensifies her thorough critique of Canadian nationalism.
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