Fiction

382 LETTERS IN CANADA and the mysteries of birth are the chief subjects of her most recent collection , Extended (Fiddlehead, 43, pa. $2.). She is interested in the moment of change and catches with precision the first light of dawn and the subtle transfonnations of the unborn child. Padraig O'Broin writes in a style that is over-dependent on the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Brusque and conversational, he relies heavily for his e/fects On alliteration , near rhyme, repetition, and other fonns of word play that stress sound. His subjects are sometimes religious, as in the debate about the Incarnation in "Factum Est," but he writes also about folk-lore, love, and nature. The most memorable poems in No Casual Trespass (Manacle Press, Oshawa, x, 112, $5.) are often marked by a tone of mingled horror and pity, as in "Noun Claws ... And Predicate," and it is not surprising to find signs of an interest in Swift sprinkled through his work. In Violet Anderson's poetry we are seldom far from nursery rhyme and nonsense verse, yet her poems are written with sharp powers of observation. In the Balance (Fiddlehead, 16) is most distinctive when enigmatic: the best poems elaborate a riddle or a puzzle, or conclude with a question which provokes the reader to generalization. Neil Tracy brings to the sonnet a talent for cryptic statement: the poems in Shapes of Clay (Fiddlehead, 12, pa. $.50) seldom achieve dramatic form, but they are characterized by emphatiC phrases and sharply defined imagery. (HUGH MACCALLUM) FICTION The variety in kind and quality of achievement and the multipliCity of influences apparent in the year's novels defy generalization. But a quotation from Konrad Lorenz used by Dave Godfrey as epigraph to his collection of short pieces, entitled Death Goes Better With Coca-Cola, seems provocatively appropriate: "To kill a culture, it is often sufficient to bring it into contact with another, particularly if the latter is higher, or is at least regarded as higher, as the culture of a conquering nation usually is. The people of the subdued side then tend to look down upon everything they previously held sacred and to ape customs which they regard as superior." Both the hazards of mixing cultures and aping customs were prominent in the year's fiction, with mechanical copying of stereotyped forms hampering even some writers concerned about national identity. Tensions between Canada's founding races provided FICTION 383 subject matter for Hugh MacLennan's first novel since 1959, as well as for books by writers as various as Hugh Hood, Michael Sheldon, and Scott Symons. West Indians in Toronto furnished lively story material for Austin C. Clarke, and a young Englishman transplanted from Oxford to Winnipeg was the basis for a novel by John Peter. But many of the year's books, including promising first efforts by Timothy Findley, George Bowering, and Bernard Epps, were not about racial con8.ict. Violence, in fact, seems the only common thread running through most of them. The very familiarity of French-English problems makes them difficult to vivify in fiction. Certainly the sense of freshness and vigour in Austin C. Clarke's writing in The Meeting Point (Macmillan, vi, 250, $5.95) springs in part from the novelty of his subject matter. Bernice Leach, domestic servant to the Jewish-Canadian Burrmanns since her arrival from Barbados in 1960, tends to dominate the novel, though she is supported by a strong cast, including her sister Estelle, her friend Dots with her shiftless husband Boysie, and his friend Henry. She is a fully drawn character, with her distinctive mixture of puritanism and amorality. From within the "triangle of life" formed by her kitchen, her radio, and her princess telephone, she tries to come to terms with a Canada which she alternately blesses and curses. Her employers, Sam and Rachel Burrmann, are a constant source of interest to her, and to the reader as long as they are seen through her eyes. When the narrative shifts occasionally to Mr. Burrmann's point of view, the focus blurs. Sam is the weak point in the novel. His affair with Bernice's younger sister, Estelle, is too obviously...