шш in review DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER - University of British ...

BOOKS IN REVIEWANYBODY HOMEBYRNA BARCLAY, The Last Echo. NeWest,$19-95/7-95·NANCY BAUER, Wise-Ears. Oberon, $12.95.THESE TWO NOVELS struggle with importantthemes, but are ultimately unable,as Columbus failed to find hisshort-cut to the Orient, to find a directroute to the heart. For opposite reasons,having to do with density and craft, thetwo authors recognize their countries onthe map but don't quite take us there.It is feminine territory, fertile landstaked for storytelling, populated bywomen with the energy and temperamentto give and sustain life.The Last Echo is the sound of hoovesbeating on the wooden floors of a burninghouse as the horses of Revelation aretranslated into lemmings rising from theashes of the old world to scamper off tothe new. It is also heartbeat, the impetusto undertake and survive the quest fornew beginnings in the New Jerusalem.Byrna Barclay's novel, legato movementin The Livelong Quartet, the story ofSwedish settlement in a Saskatchewantown, is the synthesis of Genesis andRevelation, symbolic language recordingthe transplanting of hope in the PromisedLand. Certainly this is not an originalresponse to the prairie which, morethan any other region in Canada, seemsto have inspired in writers an archetypalresponse, the language and metaphor oftraditional mythologies.At the centre of this novel, a songspielin the oral tradition of Homer and Chaucer,rich in humour and visual detail, isthe earth-mother refracted in the coloursof four Swedish daughters, mares withthe strength and grace of Biblical horses.Their song is re-creation and it bubblesfrom instinct.Inside the music box; a ring set withthree runic stones. I hold it up to the sunbut it does not catch light. Stone is onlystone in Livelong. I slide it on my weddingfinger, twist and turn it, making a wish:"Canada. Now I am for that place."Barclay's prose is rich in sensual detail.It has the line and colour of paintingsby Breughel. What is missing is thedeeper resonance that comes from acloser identification with the intelligenceand feeling of her characters. Somehowwe are distracted by the wealth of gorgeousdetail, the wood carving and embroiderythat catches the eye and disengagesthe heart and intellect. They arecolourful shapes in a fairytale gestalt,passionate and real as far as we areallowed to penetrate the surface of intuition.We just want to know them better.There is such a richness in thisprose, we are left with a longing to knowone heart carved in a proliferation ofsinging clocks.Wise-Ears, a novel by Nancy Bauer,is very nicely gift-wrapped in fine paperwith an appropriate cover painting byMaxwell Bates. Inside, there is somethingbreakable, the glass heart of a middleagedwoman seeking her own truth inthe kind of therapeutic activity our cultureseems to oblige us to undertake.Sophie espouses good causes and continuesto fret over children who havealready dropped their first feathers andgratefully flown the coop.Much of this novel is excelsior shavedto protect its fragile centre. Unfortunately,like the stuffed lives of womenlike Sophie, much of it is banal, the spinningof threads that lead nowhere nearthe truth. Sophie's letter-writing andforays into the kitchen are self-consciousattempts at creativity. We feel sorry forher but find ourselves dozing off into thatgood night as she avoids her real rageand pain with the usual anodynes.Occasionally we jerk awake longenough to wish her off her broadeningderrière as her sexless soap opera lists204