Book excerpt: "Postmodernism's critics often accuse the movement of being dangerously amoral because of its apparent wariness of concepts such as truth, ethics, and justice. Stories of the Middle Space explores the possibility of "postmodernism-with-a-conscience" and examines a variety of British and Canadian postmodern fiction to show how twentieth-century critical theory can be brought into fruitful dialogue with a faith-based perspective." "Highlighting the wide variety of ethical concerns considered by writers such as Timothy Findley, Thomas King, Carol Shields, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, and Salman Rushdie, Deborah Bowen makes the case for a new category of "postmodern realism" and shows how contemporary stories about "the real" and "the good" are constructed. Applying theoretical insights from Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin, Bowen investigates categories of postmodern realism such as magic realism, parody, and metafiction while laying the groundwork for Christian readings of a medium that is often perceived as largely irreligious." "An illuminating study of well-known contemporary writers, Stories of the Middle Space is a critically nuanced and methodologically innovative work that reads the postmodern from a faith-based perspectives to create new literary insights." "Deborah Bowen addresses the ethical concerns of a wide variety of postmodern fiction from a faith-based perspective that engages with the decentred discourses of post-structuralism. She suggests that a focus on the middle space between language and the world not only provides new insights into the construction of the real and the notion of a "good" story but also resituates the possibility of Christian reading in a largely post-Christian era"--BOOK JACKET.