The Diviners, by Margaret Lawrence (Virago, £6.99 in UK)

Gazing out over the river which flows by her isolated farmhouse in the wilds of Canada, Morag Gunn rewinds her life in a series of flashbacks, revisiting her parents' death from polio when she was five years old, her upbringing by a kindly but very poor and socially outcast couple, her unsuccessful marriage to a college professor, her fling with an Indian singer from her hometown, the birth of her mixedrace daughter Pique - who has, as the novel opens, set out to discover the roots her mother has tried so hard to bury - and her travels to England and Scotland. Lawrence uses a variety of flashback techniques, with chapter-headings such as "Memorybank Movie" and "Innerfilm" to sign-post the relevant passages for the reader; the text is also intercut with stories and snatches of songs, giving it a chunky, rough-hewn texture. The constant chopping up of the story can be irritating, but the intelligence of Lawrence's exploration of the theme of upbringing versus inheritance gives this ten-year-old motherdaughter novel an uncommonly powerful punch, and some of the characters - notably Morag herself, her adoptive father Christy, who spends his adult life quite literally on the rubbish heap, and Jules Tonnerre, whose once-proud native American heritage has been totally disallowed by contemporary society - are unforgettable.