A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

Books in ReviewBeran's conclusion exemplifies her argumentas a whole. Her exordium, "readingthis novel demands that we learn to readfor something other than marriages andbirths and passionate sex scenes among likablecharacters" constitutes a wantonpatronising of her readership, even if shehas been told to write 'down' for highschool students.Donna Pennée 's study of Nor Wanted on theVoyage indulges in some heavy politicallycorrect breathing over the fictional exemplarsof Findley's admirably humane principles:"let us hear from the defeated, fromthe silenced,"—in short, from the oppressed,both human and animal, and (perhaps)angelic as well. She catches nicely Findley'samalgamation of humour, fantasy, and severaldifferent prose genres, including his"revisionist" (like More, Bunyan, Swift),defamiliarizing of received texts.Not Wanted on the Voyage is a definitively"postmodern" novel on "the revolt of thelower orders." Pennée gives a very fairaccount of how power-relations are narrativisedvia Noah's apocalyptic, worlddestroyingactivities, and how Noah's ownaesthetic production, his grand magicshow, "The Masque of Creation," leaves noroom for the past, or for imagination, orfor human liberty. She plays patriarchaltexts—the Bible, of course, Dante, andMilton—against alternative texts throughouther "reading". For Noah's binaries canbe resisted by, for instance, the strugglingMrs. Noah in the mystery play, or by thesubversive genre of the beast fable: "somefictions are preferable to others."Further, she makes dear that the conclusionto the book must be seen as unhappy,or at best a compromised solution, for thesheep no longer sing, and Mrs. Noyes' elegyis for all of us: "in blind Mottyl's mind wasthe last whole vision of the world before itwas drowned." Findley is (self)-defined asfeminist and as a defender of the marginalized,in Pennee's postcolonial reading of hisovertly postcolonial text. As a fringe benefit,she provides a useful tutorial in postcolonialattitudes and vocabulary.Lorna Irvine, in her account of MargaretAtwood's Bodily Harm, comes out firmly,in the "Critical Reception" section, for the"readings that stress complexity," and herown is creditably consistent with that principle.She is concerned throughout withAtwood's use of perspective, reified asRennie's ways of seeing, to convey politicalthemes: Rennie's naivete decreases as,despite herself, her political involvementincreases. Other characters, Dr. Minnowspeaking as her conscience, or the (notcoincidentally Canadian) Lora, whomRennie constructs as her dark double, playroles in what is essentially Rennie's privatepsychomachia.Rennie comes to see that sexual gamesand cruel playfulness are on the same genderedpolitical spectrum as sadism,pornography, and even the torture and thechopping up of women which is an integralpart of revolutionary activity (cf. Naipaul'sGuerillas, on which much of Bodily Harmcould be read as a commentary). As in somany political novels, revolution shouldappear "real, not faked;" it involves theclosing of the airport, and the imprisonmentof subversive elements (like Lora andRennie), but the police can stop it, whenthey choose to, "without much shooting."A narrative notable for its "holes, undergrounds,and textual gaps," Bodily Harmforces the reader to follow the prisoner'sconsciousness as it struggles to make meaningfuldeductions from fragmentary clues(hence Irvine's title).The uncertainties of the narrative structurein the prison scene introduces theproblematics of the novel's ending, orindeed of its various endings, as Rennie,sequentially, becomes capable of imaginingthem. Irvine's strategy for "InterpretingBodily Harm" includes a good account ofAtwood intra-texts, such as Bluebeard's116