A.S. Byatt's Possession Reviewed by Lee Anne Phillips (1995)
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You can find the books reviewed here at one of the many women's bookstores listed in the Feminist Bookstore Index. The links indicated here point to text-only versions of the index for the convenience of women with slow modem connections but a prettier Netscape-enhanced version is just a hotlink away.
Feminist Bookstores in Canada and the USA:
Feminist Bookstores in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia & New Zealand:
Here's my very eclectic list of recommended holiday reading for feminists, some brand new, some you may have missed, in no particular order and catering to nearly every taste:
Dirty Weekend
by Helen Zahavi
Cleis Press, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, 1991
A very dark fantasy about poor brittle Bella, no-one special, who woke up one morning with the realization that she'd finally had enough. Enough of one man's casual intimidation of her, and, come to think of it, of men's general contemptuous assumption of their power to dominate women. She acts on her fatal decision with dogged Bella determination and with hilarious (and strangely satisfying) results. This is Hothead Paisan writ large and bold in photorealistic detail, a classical Greek tragedy with a goddess-like, and very apt, detachment, for Bella, dea ex machina, is in very fact Atropos, ravening, inexorable Fate, who spares no man, and this is a morality tale with a very simple message ostensibly and offhandedly addressed to an audience of violent men but carefully observed and approved by an unacknowledged tragedic chorus of women, among whom we must number ourselves:
If, in fact, you see her and you want her.
Think on. Don't touch her. Just let her pass you by. Don't place your palm across her mouth and drag her to the ground.
For unknowingly, unthinkingly, unwittingly you might have laid your heavy hand on Bella. And she's woken up this morning with the knowledge that she's finally had enough
- from Dirty Weekend
If reading the newspaper depresses you. If the man down the street leers as you walk past and makes you feel somewhat like meat. If the hulking loungers on the corner frighten you even a little. If the Simpson verdict has you down a bit, just try some Bella on for size. Go ahead, admire yourself. She really fits quite nicely. Doesn't she?
Beneath My Heart
by Janice Gould
Firebrand Books, Ithaca, 1990
Sensuous, richly imagined poetry by one of our most talented poets that sweeps us with profound power into the very center of her life.
Beneath my heart a torrent of blood
carries all that I love.
- from Beneath My Heart
That pulsing cataract plunges us deep into the world behind her eyes as we experience her childhood anger, resentment, and shame at growing up first Indian and then lesbian in a straight White world; her complex and many-dimensioned love for other women; and, lastly, her final, grieving reconciliation with her mother and her self.
When mama dies I will turn
like a star learning to shine,
the world will release me
into its vastness.
When death comes rapping with its soft claw,
I will stand in the doorway,
then leave.
- from Beneath My Heart
This poetry is not for the faint of heart; these words are distilled like strong spirits, a fiery shot of courage and madness. You won't find here the syrupy, childish, stuff so often foisted on us as verse but the pure quill, uncut, the bitter taste of rejection as well as the heady rush of just-beginning love. She makes us feel the sharp pain and rage of hiding out from the taunts of classmates and then meticulously traces that rage and pain into adulthood where it has been ground down and blunted into the dull ache of melancholy and isolation as she describes herself barricaded:
In the room where I think and think a long time,
brooding, saying nothing, where I crouch over words
because a sullen angel watches, ready to cut
my thoughts to ribbons with a fierce blade—
- from The Room
This fortress room is a citadel we may recognize for we've held, perhaps, our own despondent vigils there. Do I speak for many of us when I say that I have felt, too often, the same numb fury? She gives us back that brute anger, frozen on the cusp of human rage, and then, in another piece that fairly sparkles with animal joy and delight at being merely alive, dives headlong out of that narrow room and into the wide green world:
In the jungle
we look for the deepest green.
- from We Look for the Deepest Green
She discovers for us, with us, the rich fecundity of horses and birds, the chill silence of frozen lakes and coyote's sardonic grin, the hidden paths that lead into light and the soft common space we share:
The lodge is entered from below,
a doorway brightens the water.
It is warm and damp inside,
the woven floor tamped down.
- from The Beaver Woman
Here is the real secret, the longed-for, safe green haven at journey's end is the doorway back out into the world. She speaks with her own clear voice and yet our own thoughts echo as she speaks, in this poem of transcendent beauty, the words that capture the heart of love and recapture her own true power, as the child comes into full womanhood and stands lingering on the threshold of possibility:
This is a gift: to be drawn into the dark,
frightened, where power beckons,
or madness, or whatever heals.
- from The Beaver Woman
This slim volume is a gift of blood drawn from the deep womb of memory and pain and touched upon our foreheads like a star of love; the record of a spirit journey of healing that culminates in redemptive acceptance of all she is and, with her, all we are.
The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches - Second Edition
by Robin Morgan
W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1994
A wonderful reworking and expansion of essays touching on issues from the beginnings of the "modern" feminist movement in the 60's to the recently "noticed" Nushi, Chinese women's ancient secret writing which survived unnoticed by scholars into modern times. This is the testament of a woman who's been there, seen the history when it was still just what's going on, and visualized the future when it was only a vague hope for something better. Her words are tremendously vitalizing and empowering to read for any woman.
The Tao of Women
by Pamela Ketz and Jacqueline Tobin
This is Taoism from a woman's point of view, featuring beautifully calligraphed illustrations of the delicate Nu Shu women's script of ancient China contrasted with the modern Chinese equivalents and accompanying English translation. These are the only examples of Nu Shu currently available in an English language text.
The Sensual Thread
by Beatrice Stone
Third Side Press, Chicago, 1994
An incredibly romantic love story about two women who are committed to the life of the land, in every way. It is a fantasy, but fantasy so close to possible experience for many women that it becomes heartbreakingly real and desperately longed for. You might want to have a large box of tissues nearby.
Set in the mountains of Tennessee, as modern in time as this sweet story is ancient in setting and wisdom, Lee returns wounded to her childhood home to try to recapture the brave strong girl she was. She reconnects with the place, the dear friend she'd left behind, and finally with herself as her inward journey finds someone waiting who'd been there all the time. Kay has her own journey of return to make, her own discoveries, her own barriers to overcome, and as they work out their separate lives, they discover an unshared secret they'd known together all along. That there is nothing really new under the sun and that all things are tied with gossamer threads into the rich web of life, just waiting to be noticed. That sharing follows wholeness.
This book is a real treasure. When I finished reading it I was so deeply moved that I picked up a pen and wrote an unabashed fan letter to the author, (something I very rarely do - actually, it was the second time ever, I think, and "deeply moved" is a somewhat less embarrassing euphemism for helpless, sobbing tears of joy) who promptly wrote me back at length. To say I was surprised would be an understatement but she is as quietly unassuming and earthy as her book, and a wonderful woman.
The Nancy Clue Series:
The Case of the Not-so-Nice Nurse
The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend and recently
A Ghost in the Closet
by Mabel Maney
Cleis Press, Pittsburgh and San Francisco
These very funny send-ups chronicle the unexpurgated adventures of our beloved girlhood idols, daring girl sleuth Nancy Clue, her new special friend, the dedicated and efficient Nurse Cherry Aimless, her pals Midge and Velma (stand-ins for George and Bess who are, not surprisingly, camp couselors at the exclusive Camp Hathaway for Girls - Please note: knowledge of lesbian culture and in-jokes is recommended for full enjoyment), and now the famous Hardly Boys as they merge old-fashioned high jinks and sleuthy derring-do with more modern issues and a gay (but seemly) sensibility that was subtly present but unacknowledged in their original incarnations.
The author has captured perfectly the tone and diction of the originals as she leads us a merry (or should I say gay?) chase over hill and dale and through perfectly charming restaurants that serve delicious food for every occasion as Nancy neatly solves every mystery that comes her way with her charactistic modesty and aplomb. Nancy and her chums are always perfectly turned out (though how they fit so many clothes into the tiny trunk of that convertible I'll never know) and are never at a loss for a clever plan as they rise to expose each new villain's perfidy with the lively spunk and impeccable fashion sense we knew and loved as girls.
Alma Rose
by Edith Forbes
The Seal Press, Seattle, 1993
A love story and something more as it cleanly segues from a first love affair with a love 'em and leave 'em butch "scoundrel" (and unlikely Muse) to an abiding love of the sere and monumental landscapes of the American West and of the small towns scattered across that great immensity of desert, and then back again, thoroughly exploring several different kinds of passion along the way.
Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995
by Adrienne Rich
W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1995
Words of profound power, the most recent tapestry of poems loomed by a master weaver of words.
Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.- from Miracle Ice Cream
It is almost hubris to comment on or review a cultural icon. Let it be said only that this slim book builds on and continues her continuing exploration of what it means to be a participant in the American, in the human, dream as the century draws to close. If the common language she struggled to find is not yet spoken freely, yet her voice in speaking comes so very close to being the true voice of so very many women and the new poetic dialogue she began and continues here has been joined by so very many others. She now speaks, has always spoken, raw truth, in conversation with us all.
Out of Time
by Paula Martinac
The Seal Press, Seattle, 1990
Lunging into an antique store to escape the rain, Susan is plunged into an obsessive search for the true history of four women from the past whose pictures she discovers in an old photograph album which she compulsively steals, captured by a familiar look and knowledge. This is a story so familiar it hurts, seeking the hidden, lesbian truth in concealed, forgotten lives. A ghostly love story and a Lambda Award winner.
Aimée and Jaguar
by Erica Fischer
HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1995
A true story played out against the terrible backdrop of the Holocaust in World War II Germany, of the love that grew between a Jewish lesbian, Jaguar, and a Gentile wife and mother. Diary excerpts, letters, photographs, and documents bring their tragic passion back into the light from out of the dusty recesses of an old woman's treasured "book of tears." Berlin, 1943, uncertain home for two very real women who only loved each other and wanted just to live.
Forget your preconceived notions of what it was like, the John Wayne version of a heroic, noble war: this is the women's story, of quiet, desperate struggle to merely survive, feeding children, juggling household budgets and ration books, making beds and sleeping; of crouching in shelters while the indifferent bombs fall from airplanes high above; of enemies so petty and mean that they squabble over the clothes and jewelry of their victims. But every day, new victims are caught and transported to concentration camps by an implacable foe. A moment of carelessness, the smallest mistake can spell disaster. The danger is very real.
Each day the women plot the movements of the advancing troops on a map, not as generals might, or spies, but to know how close they are to being rescued. Mile by mile the Russian armies draw nearer and the women dare to hope. They debate whether to try to go to meet the advancing troops but are frightened by reports that the Russian soldiers are brutally raping all the German women and girls they find. This fear is justified. The stories are true. They anxiously calculate the day of liberation, not long now, soon, the end of 1944. They are just four months too optimistic.
There is no glorious victory, no parade. No flags are waved above a cheering mass of men as they storm the final bunker with guns blazing. No happy ending as the patriotic music swells and the sun rises on a splendid new republic, cleansed and freshly washed in the holy blood of martyrs. That's not really the point, is it? Wasn't that what we were fighting? And the martyrs are only dead.
There is only the nasty, sordid reality of sneaking informers and cowardly tattletales. Only the wary cunning of the hunted, as they lie low, concealed, trembling, and afraid of both their own countrymen and the advancing armies. Only the simple fact that two women who loved each other were torn apart by the random butchery of war in which opposing leaders cosily agree not to harm each other but only "designated targets" and in which other men, and women, and children, are pawns to be murdered, raped or robbed with impunity by either side for the "good of the men."
They call it morale. The Nazi's had their bloody "morale builder" in the widely hated Jews who were murdered, raped and robbed in horrifying numbers to distract the German "Volk" from the grim reality of war and to lend some sick sense of "holy" purpose to this terrible butchery of human beings all over Europe. The Allies had their own, their "spoils of war," the women. Murder, rape, and robbery. That's all it is, a war.
This is an important book, a necessary book, a book you have to read. Never mind that it reveals a lesbian past almost invisible now, concealed by the lies of victors and vanquished alike. Never mind that it is a true story of the Holocaust in an age when so many want to forget that it ever happened, is happening still in other lands, with women's bodies, as always, as rewards for the troops of either side. Never mind that it's not really a "fun" read. It grips you with the power only truth can have. It shows you the true face of evil and that face is dull and ordinary, it's the face of everyday bigotry and intolerance, the familiar face of the man next door.
Kathleen O'Donald
by Penny Hayes
The Naiad Press, Tallahassee, 1994
A meticulously researched historical romance about immigrant women in the garment trade in 1909, detailing their economic hardships and the horrible conditions in the sweatshops before the International Ladies Garment Workers Union succeeded in organizing the industry. A timely reminder that laissez faire patriarchal capitalism was not quite the unmitigated blessing that some of its modern apologists pretend to believe. A warning and a promise, that women can take power when they unite, that there is strength when we gather together, that in the midst of bitter struggle there can be joy, companionship, and love.
I would have liked to give each of these books a more lengthy and loving review but limited space doesn't permit me that luxury. If any of them seem to be as well worth reading as they really are, in spite of my too-terse descriptions, and you want to read it, please make your purchase from a women's bookstore. If you don't know of a local store, visit my web site, The Feminist Bookstore Index, at these URLs:
http://www.igc.apc.org/women/bookstores/
Feminist bookstores in Canada and the USA
http://www.igc.apc.org/women/bookstores/widehtml.html
Europe, Asia, South America, Australia & New Zealand
On these fully indexed pages you will probably find one or
more women's bookstores convenient to you, including
many with presences on the world-wide web, wherever you are
in the world. Please purchase from a women's store if
you can. Women's words are precious but often
fragile, as countless examples show us. Entire generations of
women's experience and wisdom have been lost (or
almost lost) because of "traditional" indifference
to women's lives. Women's bookstores are the
treasuries dedicated to keeping our stories circulating but
they need your help in keeping our common language alive for
ourselves, our daughters, ...and our sons.
Thank you so very much for your support,
Lee Anne Phillips
E-mail: leeanne@leeanne.com
Copyright © 1995 Lee Anne Phillips
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Some books you read with your head. Some books you read
with your heart. If you read this one with your head,
you'll have read a pretty good book, but if you read
it with your heart, you'll have met an exceptional
woman, who may live in your heart for years to come.
This is Janet Lee James' autobiographical account of
her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at age 23, and her
subsequent decision to leave her home, work and family in
Pittsburgh and pursue her dreams in Alaska. Janet (you
don't mind if I call her Janet, I hope; I feel as if
I know her, now) is a woman of great spirit, an
irrepressible, independent, I'll-do-it-my way kind of
woman. Fortunately, she doesn't mind a little hard
work, either, as she takes work as a waitress/cook/baker in a
tiny Alaskan village cafe which caters to the long distance
truckers who roar up and down the Alaskan highways, and then
moves onto a more challenging position as cook on a schooner
which comes frightfully near to sinking during a storm in
Cook Inlet. When MS times get tough, she returns to her
previous career of radio disk jockey, or learns another trade
entirely. For fun, Janet likes men, dogsleds, white water,
and balloons.
But don't think you'll avoid the real life
tragedy of multiple sclerosis. The book is subtitled
"The Outrageous True Adventures of One Woman With
Multiple Sclerosis Living in the Alaskan Wilderness".
Janet accurately portrays the feeling of dread and
helplessness which accompanies exacerbations. She tells of
her embarrassing loss of bladder and bowel control, her fear
of getting involved in love relationships, her refusal to
believe that the disease will win.
Janet takes us through twenty years of her life, from 1973
to 1993. Hers is not always an easy story to read, but she is
direct and honest, a woman you'll be glad you
met.
Copyright © 1995 Lee Lawton
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Diane Salvatore's latest offering, Paxton Court,
now available in hardback, takes a Naiad
'formula' novel out of the well-known
packages -- not a typical coming out story, this, nor a
mystery. And there's little eroticism here.
Salvatore (author of Benediction, and
Love, Zena Beth) sets her story in a generic
Florida retirement community. Watch the sparks fly when four
gay couples (three lesbian couples and a pair of men) decide
to settle down in Lakeside Leisure.
One straight neighbor embarks on a homophobic campaign of
harrassment, one befriends the new residents of the
development, and another falls in love with one of the
arrivals. Salvatore provides comic relief with a Lakeside
Leisure Lothario, who just doesn't get it when
lesbian Angie rebuffs his advances.
The book jacket informs the reader that Paxton Court is
"insightful, erotic and wickedly funny." Certainly
Salvatore has a light hand and a way with dialog. Her
characters are consistent (almost too much so, very few
change and grow), her plot ends neatly tied (again, almost
too much so) and the book paints a realistic, if simplistic,
picture of contemporary life. She certainly creates a
lifelike setting with her retirement community, and seems to
use the atmosphere there to good purpose. And it's
nice to see gay writing which begins to look at some of the
issues surrounding aging.
But the tone is almost too light, even frothy. The
characters' emotions don't reach out and grip
the reader. Even death doesn't seem to weigh too
heavily. Naiad has always seemed to decree that the problems
of the world have to be wrapped up in less than 250 pages,
which must hamstring authors who seek to tell anything more
than a simple story.
Give this one a "B" -- it's certainly well
above formula "trash", but falls short of stellar.
Recommended for those wanting a light read that's a
little different...
Copyright © 1995 Karen Sloan
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Okay, you all have my permission to say, "You should
have known." This book is, after all, a mystery which
takes place at the Miss American Pageant. Yes, that's
right, the Miss America Pageant. Miss, not
Ms. And, the amateur sleuth is named Sam and
she works for a newspaper, and she has a studly boyfriend,
and she didn't want to go to the Miss American
Pageant, but she did, and her little heart was warmed, and
tears fell, and the mystery was solved, and quickly
forgotten, I might add, by this reader.
A solid little piece of mediocrity. Okay, now, one, two,
three....."You....."
Copyright © 1995 Lee Lawton
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Over the years, the stories which have often captured my deepest heart were the tales told by travelers: Amelia Earhart, the one aviator who needs no introduction for most women; Delia J. Heckley, an early African explorer and naturalist; Annie Smith Peck, a mountaineer who climbed the highest peak in South America (Huascarán) when she was sixty years of age; the list goes on and on. I'm so glad to read in this new collection by Marybeth Bond that the list is continuing, growing, as fifty women tell their own traveler's tales with the unique and familiar viewpoint only a woman can bring to foreign cultures and lands.
These women share so much of their hearts with us as they cover territory ranging over the wide earth and back again, in stories scattered across the map like daisies on a lawn, that we wish for more, for the familiar ending to the fairytale, "and then they lived..." or for the next story, "The next day found them in...." But these are just the beginnings or the middles or the ends; scenes from a life or one snapshot from a long journey. At the end of each story we know that the road goes on and if one woman stands aside another will take her place and travel on.
Kathleen Clark captures us with "I was about 50 when I decided to go to Egypt. I wanted to take a trip to let myself know that life was going to continue to be good, or even better, after that fateful age." Catherine Watson sums up a question a lot of us have asked when she describes relating stories of bitter winter cold to Acapulcaños and they ask her why she lives there, "That's the same question I ask myself about this time every winter when my eyes get tired of gray and white and start longing for the Green Flash."
The Green Flash, a startling metaphor for travel, a view of the sun most often seen on the western shore of a great ocean and in the tropics, as the sun dips below the horizon and, just as she disappears, blinks a green cat eye at us, a sly wink of recognition. I searched for the Green Flash for years, scanning many far horizons, and finally saw it not in some exotic place but in my home state, California, as I stood on a cliff by the Pacific Ocean just south of Morro Bay looking for and finding migrating gray whales. I glanced up from my binoculars and saw the sun just setting — there it was, the cat's green eye winked at me and I laughed in astonishment and delight. The best things are sometimes found while not looking for them and the stories of these women too, often reveal the adventure and freedom of openness, as plans are laid aside and things just happen.
For any woman who wants to look at the world through other
women's eyes, who wants to feel and smell the
textures and scents of the world as she herself might see it,
who wants to vicariously experience the thrill of a new place
or plan her own escape beyond her own small corner of the
world, her natural fears and doubts, and into hard won and
well deserved freedom and confidence, this book is a roadmap.
Difficulties can be overcome, new paths have been found and
traveled by other courageous women, journey's end is
only another beginning. I recommend it.
Copyright © 1995 Lee Anne Phillips
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Every so often a book comes along which powerfully reminds us how much has been lost in the breakdown of the classical educational system. Leaving aside the fact that only the children of the wealthy fully partook of the cultural riches and historical breadth that were conveyed by this system, the old tradition imparted a common language, indescribably expressive and luxurious in the infinite possibilities of allusion and metaphor contained in a conversation between equals schooled under its precepts.
Possession is a book that uses that language to capture the spirit of an age, a class, and a culture in a delightful and accessible romp across the breadth of England and abroad. We follow the path of an investigation by two unlikely detectives, Maud Bailey and Roland Michel, (note well their names, like so much else in this pregnant book, they fairly scintillate with meaning) on an academic quest to uncover the truth behind a tantalizing hint of a close connection between two minor (in fact, imaginary) literary figures who were not known to have even liked each other, a developing love story no less poignant for the fact that the lovers are long dead; whose developing passion for each other propels us, in our imagination, back to Queen Victoria's time, in the mid-1800's, to read their letters, the diaries of their friends and acquaintances, the marginalia of their libraries, looking over these collective shoulders to grasp at second, or third, or even fourth, hand the immense depth and pellucid integrity of their love.
Their letters are worth the price of the book in themselves. Oh, those dear, darling, letters, saved in precious bundles, wrapped carefully in ribbon, as might have befitted holy relics or treasured objets d'art. Relics they are and art, true art, went into their making. Such letters are rare today, though sorely missed by some, including the present reviewer, a confessed academic and lover of words. The commercial success of the idealized correspondence of Griffin and Sabine demonstrates a little of how desperately we miss them and how completely incapable we feel of recreating — much less receiving — them except in fiction.
They say that the literate Chinese, reading in the great literature of China, are immersed in a sea of literary reference, of three or four word quotes and phrases from 500, 1000, even 2000 years ago or more, magnificently sprinkled like precious golden leaven through the loaf of each text. Our own language, while perhaps not quite so ancient, is no less splendid in the hands of a master.
Ms. Byatt is such a master. As she speaks, successively, the words of Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash, (How full of portent are those two names as well!) as revealed by her in their supposed letters, they come alive as fluent, even eloquent, speakers of our almost-forgotten, once common, language of shared Western culture and thought.
When Ash quoted Keats, "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affection and the truth of imagination...", he leaves out the following words, "— what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth..." and then refers to a somewhat later quote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," in which Keats has thought a bit more carefully, Ash is very sure, we may be certain, that Christabel will recognize the references.
We hear in all this the echo of a long ago conversation, still in progress; we hear Plato, or Socrates rather, pondering the essence of beauty, equating it with virtue; we hear Aristotle, who thought it the gift of god; we hear Herbert, who asked, "Is there in truth no beauty?"; we hear Keats dismissing the logical equivalence by attributing the phrase to the lying urn which blithely ignores, among other things, the bloody warfare which made that "peaceful" mountain citadel necessary and which disingenuously allows us to temporarily forget the inevitable approach of old age which "shall this generation waste;" we hear Ash agreeing with Keats, calling the notion nonsense. Like any conversation, a knowledge of what was said before is crucial to understanding the full context of the present moment. You can hardly tell the players without a scorecard.
Naturally, Christabel responds, sharp as a tack, not dismayed by mere veiled implications but understanding them all, cutting through to the heart of Ash's argument and worrying at its looser threads, giving as good as she got in obscure reference and recondite allusion, in a letter that sparkles with wit and life, "the life of the imagination." The book is filled with these delightful exchanges. Ash later mentions Paracelsus, surely a minor writer, by name (not quite sure that Christabel will know the reference, but hopeful), and, when she replies, she is, of course, familiar with Paracelsus and, indeed, that very passage. (Hushed murmurs of approbation rise from the assembled crowd, ourselves among them, "Good save!" "Well played!" "Hear, hear!")
She was classically, albeit idiosyncratically, educated, at her own behest, to fulfill her own ambition, with the help of her unconventional father, a rare accomplishment in those days, when women were, as Virginia Woolf reminds us, systematically excluded from English institutions of higher education, at least until about the 1870s, although a few paltry "Women's Academies" were in existence at the time of the story. Her pride in that exceptional achievement is obvious. When she speaks of looking over her father's body of work in "wild surmise," we stand for a moment with Cortés and his men upon a peak in Darien, described in a poem by that same Keats. Cortés saw only the Pacific Ocean while she beheld a vasty sea of knowledge, not "...Dead Knowledge — but all alive and brilliant and full of import for our lives." The author here reveals, in a key passage, not only Christabel's feelings about her own scholarship, but the author's admiration for the world of academia and, by extension, our own vicarious esteem for the "Truth of Imagination." and the "Life of Language."
As the past story progresses, as Christabel LaMotte is encircled in her predestined watery fastness and Ash's world sadly, nobly, disintegrates — as the present story unfolds, as Maud Bailey descends slowly, redeemed, from her isolated tower and Roland nears the end of his quest, all of them driven by fate to their appointed places and rôles, as we become aware of past kindnesses, so tender, of the betrayals and reconciliations, so wrenching, of the terrible, wonderful, inevitability of life going on, time after time, tale after tale, we are swept up, caught fast, in the flow of neverending story, enraptured on a romantic, mythic, journey, in which we can hope to perceive the mirror of our own lives. In the end, we possess them, lovers all, in the truest sense, through their remembrances and artifacts, in that the information, the passion, contained in these ephemeral vestiges of their pasts, pasts that never were, has entered into and possessed our own hearts and minds.
Possession is, of course, a classic romance; the multiple,
heartbreaking, dénouements are deliciously postponed
until the final pages of the book. The story of the doomed
past lovers — and how can they not be doomed since the
events of their lives are forever fixed, like flies caught in
amber, in the lovely immutability of the past —
entwined with the fated present lovers, teases us to the
point of languid frenzy, caressing us with intimate dialogue
building to a peak of ardent revelation and then coyly
breaking off, drifting away to touch some new disclosure.
Gradually they are disrobed of the anonymity of time and
revealed to us in their naked human passions. I wept at last
for the tragedy and beauty of it all. You will too,
I'm sure.
Copyright © 1995 Lee Anne Phillips
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
This online publication is a cooperative
effort by many women and will be changing as time goes on.
The overall purpose of the site is to encourage women to read
women's books and to buy women's books at
women's bookstores if they possibly can. The site is
loosely (some might say chaotically) connected with the Feminist
Bookstore Index, an online resource indexing
women's bookstores all around the world, and we
encourage you, if any of these books sounds like they would
interest you, to find the women's bookstore nearest
you (if you haven't got a favorite one already) and
support women's words by buying women's books
at women's stores.
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Individual Reviews Copyright © 1995, 1996 by
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Archived on February 1st, 1996 by Lee Anne Phillips
in Oakland, CA, USA