Timothy Findley's preface to this reworked edition of his second novel acknowledges his overconfidence and overambition when he first wrote it. Even with his changes for this edition it's unmistakable, though his edits probably made it more readable as there are few of the lengthy monologues that he notes were in the original.

The Butterfly Plague is weird and surreal and tries to bite off more than it can chew, from 1930s Hollywood family drama to the rise of Nazi Germany and musings on race, power fame and genetic perfection. The exploration of 'Race' (with a capital R in some sections of the book) is particularly uncomfortable and I couldn't quite tell how much of that was intentional. There are two quite stereotyped Black characters described using a now-antiquated and offensive term and an older Jewish man who is described in a way that sounds like an antisemitic cartoon. My sense, and the best case scenario, is that Findley was attempting to implicate the audience through these types of mentions and through the character of Ruth, who is appalled by Nazi fascism and eugenics but is unable to resist the idea of genetic perfection. Even still it's a problematic dynamic to have these visible minority characters used as object lessons.