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

Farrant's metafictions often focus on unappreciatedartists who, like Farrant, create"jewels from the trash of the age"("Thunder Showers in Bangkok"). The titlestory, in the section called "THERE ISCOMPETITION FOR THE HEARTS ANDMINDS OF THE PEOPLE," presents a governmentwith Departments of Hope,Depth, Experiments, Diversity, Silence, andSecrets which attempts to control and subvertunsanctioned images, messages, and"exotic reading" from such groups asSPEIV (Society to Prevent the Eradicationof Inner Voices), "the perpetuators andguardians of the novel." While the officialposition is "to integrate minority groupsinto mainstream culture," it keeps anapproved list excluding Boring WhiteWomen and Dead White Males and suggeststhat old people "abandon the pursuitof joy." Advising that artists try "workingwith empty spaces" or make "novel houses,each room a chapter," it wishes to save thelast existing sheet of paper for "somethingof importance." This government usesaudiences for market research "target practice."Expected to rate televised natural disastersand to behold rather than to interact,they are allowed only fifteen shades of pleasureand must "colour-coordinate [their]ideas to match the prevailing winds."Neverthless, in "THE WORK" section,Farrant's self-conscious artists continue tobake poems ("Oven") and collect "straystories" forbidden by rules ("Rules").As Hardy says in a Contemporary Authorsentry, she "writes to understand or imposeorder, however fictive, on [her] life."Farrant seems to do the opposite: to explodethe ordinary complacencies with whichmost of us try to impose order. LikeFarrant, however, Hardy parodies her drugaddicted"Reality Therapist" and recognizesthat "reality is just a construct." Bothauthors create what Hardy calls "openingsbetween worlds" to offer us glimpses intoalternative realities.Back in That Skin AgainJack HodginsThe Macken Charm. M & S $18.99Reviewed by loel MartineauThe events that make up the action in TheMacken Charm are simple: the one Mackensister and eight surviving Macken brothersand their spouses congregate at an old hotelsite; they travel into the nearby small townto attend the funeral of Glory, deceasedwife of the youngest brother, Toby; thebereaved husband lives up to his reputationas hellion with various outrageous stunts,and, late in the afternoon, disappears; theseventeen-year-old narrator, Glory's andToby's nephew Rusty, recounts his infatuationwith Glory and probably understandswhy she drowned; after the funeral the clanand various friends regroup at the hotel siteand, during their night-long wake, refurbishGlory's dilapidated shack; Rustylocates Toby and reintegrates him into thefamily while realizing that he, Rusty, mustleave the family arena. All this occurs intwenty-four or twenty-five hours, from onemorning through to the next.Jack Hodgins spins these events into arollicking novel—albeit restrained by hisstandards—by the tried-and-true narrativedevice of beginning the story as close aspossible to the end and then going backand filling in. We learn just enough aboutRusty's parents and their generation, andabout Glory—an enigma who bridges thegap between the generations—to makesense of the funeral and wake. An observationin A Passion for Narrative, the guide towriting fiction that preceded The MackenCharm in Hodgins's oeuvre, points toward afuller understanding: "You can find storiesrecorded while the events are occurring,stories recorded immediately afterwards,and stories recorded long afterwards." Anearly passage in The Macken Charm signalsthe temporal span between the narrated139