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See also www.catherinebush.com
320 pages hardcover
Finished books available
US: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Canada: HarperFlamingo
Holland: Het Spectrum
Film: Keatley Films
France: Editions Tryptique, 2006
(Photo: Miriam Berkley)
Catherine Bush holds a degree in comparative literature from Yale University, and has taught creative writing at Concordia University and the University of Florida. Her fiction, non-fiction and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The Globe and Mail and The New York Times Book Review. Her second novel, The Rules of Engagement, shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award, was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and received stellar American reviews.
a novel by Catherine Bush
A POWERFUL EXPLORATION OF WHAT LOVE IS, THE EMOTIONAL BORDERS WE MUST CROSS IN ORDER TO TRY TO ATTAIN IT, AND THE RESPONSIBILITIES INHERENT IN ITS POSSESSION
- A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
- A Los Angeles Times Notable Book of the Year
- Shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award
- A Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of 2000
Arcadia Hearne is a researcher who studies contemporary war and specializes in issues of military intervention. Far from her home town of Toronto, she has created a new life for herself in London. While she pursues the study of violence, surveying the rich arsenal of current global conflicts, she refuses to put herself either physically or emotionally at risk.
Ten years before, Arcadia fled Toronto in the 
aftermath of a violent incident involving two university students, both her lovers. Now, beginning with the unexpected arrival of her sister, Lux, the "safe zone" that Arcadia has constructed for herself is increasingly invaded. Thrust into a world full of people who, like her, hide secrets and are in flight from difficult pasts, Arcadia is compelled bothto contemplate new possibilities for intervention and to confront her own painful history.
PRAISE FOR THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
“An elaborately structured and consistently overdetermined book—risky indeed. Coincidence plays an almost supernatural role. Yet Bush deploys this highly literary strategy in the service of humanism. As any fine novel should, it raises more questions than it answers; and in its meticulous, beautiful prose conjures lives whose near-realism is the source of their power.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“Bush’s terse, elegant, often sensuous prose draws us swiftly into her protagonist’s intelligent yet troubled mind. Her fusion in this novel of the political and the personal is not only ambitious, but compelling and provocative: a thoughtful attempt to examine the nature of love and risk.” — THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
“In her second novel, The Rules of Engagement, she traverses war zones—psychological, sexual, real—with a clear-eyed, cerebral sophistication.... The exhilarating merit here is in the author’s willingness to think, not merely to tell a story with a spot of seductive description along the way.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Bush is an evocative writer who can create a sensuous atmosphere with a few well-chosen words.” — THE WASHINGTON POST
“Catherine Bush has written that rare book, an intriguing novel of ideas peopled with characters who live on in memory long after their issues have been resolved.” — THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE