Fiction 2

318 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 which sounds fine, except that this 'wisdom' has a ring of rather conventional 1960s thought: It doesn't matter to me if you want to garden or not; it doesn't make me happier that you're there, or unhappier that you're not. I do what I do, that's all. If yau're reading in the living room, Idon't join you ifl don't feel like it. Just be yourself, Katie. If we like each other, we'll like each other. If we don't, we won't. I don't think she understood . Not then. Maybe by now it's coming to her. (174) But freedom to be oneself, in this novel at least, seems oddly hollow. Morag Gunn in The Diviners also seeks freedom and independence and consequently ends up alone, but her life still has a centre: in her writing and in her relationship with her daughter. Abra's freedom, in contrast, seems a freedom in a void, and yet this narrowing down of human possibility is offered to us as Abra's 'fulfilment: Since this novel is about the acceptance of differences, I have doubts about raising these kinds of objections, but (to raise them again) I'm not sure Barfoot realizes how odd her heroine is. For all my objections, however, there is one thing I have no doubts about: Abra is an impressive first novel. 2 / SAM SOLECKI My overall impression of fiction produced in 1978 by established writers is that most of it simply repeats work we have seen by these writers in previous years. Granted that we expect some kind of continuity through a writer's body of work, we nevertheless distinguish between a writer simply repeating or parodying himself- the later work of Callaghan is an obvious example - and a writer in whom we sense not only continuity but also growth and development - Davies comes to mind here. This is not to say that work of the former kind lacks merit but only that its predictability will eventually leave the reader with a sense of dejii DU. For me this is the effect of the new collections of stories by Margaret Gibson, David Adams Richards, Matt Cohen, and William Kinsella (Considering Her Condition, Dancers at Night., Nigh t Flights, Scars), each of which contains some interesting fictions with often dazzling local effects especially in Gibson and Kinsella; but if one knows each writer's earlier work the stories are often predictable and therefore ultimately disappointing . This is also true of the novels by Morley Callaghan, Pauline Gedge, Martin Myers, and Robert Harlow. Myers's case is particularly disappointing because since his first and very funny novel, The Assignment , he has produced two books, Frigate and now lzzy Manheim's FICTlON/231 9 Reunion, that are simply weak imitations of their brilliant predecessor. The promise of The Assignment has not been fulfilled. Morley Callaghan's The Enchanted Pimp is another novel that calls to mind its predecessors since it reads almost like a solemn parody of the Callaghan of the early and middle periods: the mysterious woman with a heart of gold, the man who loves and betrays her, a sleazy hotel, a contrast between the rich and poor parts of town, and a plot culminating in a mysterious murder all add up to a fairly predictable novel. If Callaghan were not the grand old man of Canadian letters The Enchanted Pimp - one of the less memorable titles of our time - would probably not have been reviewed as charitably as it was, and as all of Callaghan'S recent work has been. This problem of a writer repeating himself or herself is also evident, though to a lesser degree, in the new work by Alice Munro and Marian Engel. A reader unfamiliar with Munro's earlier work or with the work of Doris Lessing, Margaret Laurence, and Margaret Atwood would probably find Munro's new collection of stories Who Do You Think You Are? (Macmillan, 206, $10.95) an original and accomplished book. Yet to anyone familiar with the feminist fiction of the last two decades the book will seem a retelling of the...