By Susan Musgrave. Thistledown Press, 273 pp, $18.95, softcover.

You may have studied her poems in school, or perhaps you have the nagging feeling that you should have. But even if you're not into poetry, it would be a mistake to dismiss Susan Musgrave's You're in Canada Now”¦Motherfucker: A Memoir of Sorts, a collection of her nonfiction pieces, many of them previously published. This is a book for lovers of witty, introspective, edgy writing. The anecdotal title comes out of the mouth of a Mountie as he's arresting an American drug smuggler who insists that he should have special rights in this country. Although Musgrave herself has crossed many borders, she is a Canadian who has lived on Vancouver Island much of her life.

The essays are loosely grouped into themes that permeate Musgrave's life; their sum total is truly a "memoir of sorts". She paints a varied and, at times, startlingly unappealing portrait of herself and those around her through stories of addiction, life in small-town B.C., relationships with parents and children, and her experience as a Canadian poet. She shows the impact on her family of her husband serving a lengthy prison sentence for bank robbery. Yet everything has a measure of humour, even the obituaries.

If you persist with reading the book after recoiling from some of the off-putting personal things Musgrave describes and ignoring errors not caught by a proofreader (11 provinces? "Chekov"? "Ghandi"?), you begin to develop a real affection for this funny, insightful person who describes herself as "someone who back-pedalled away from kindergarten on a stolen tricycle". In her, we see our quirky selves, our poetic, engaging selves: "My first marriage began to crumble around the time I developed the habit of dipping Graham Wafers in my morning cup of tea." In another episode: "I pour myself a glass of fortified Soy Beverage, further fortified by a shot of Jamesons." Along with the humour, there is also wisdom: "Again, it's the discrepancy between the way things are, and the way we want them to be, that causes such suffering."

There are numerous passages here that make one chuckle and that demand to be read aloud to share with someone else.