Fiction 1

Letters in Canada 1995 Fiction 1 / T.L. CRAIG Thirty-seven novels and twenty-six short story collections were submitted for review by authors who have already published at least one volume of fiction. This is an unusually high number of titles, and one can only speculate if it represents the start of a boom. While numbers are no way to measure literature, I am glad to say that quantity has not meant any dilution of quality. There is somethingfor everyonein the sixty-three books discussed below. For the United Nations, 1994 was the Year of the Family: for Canadian fiction, 1995 seems to have been the year of the Un-family. More than ever, this year's crop of fiction by established writers goes for the jugular of the nuclear family, demythologizing its archetypal features at the same time as it recognizes the absence of any alternatives. To what extent the Quebec Referendum has prompted such fervent consideration of failed families I leave as a moot point. The dysfunctional family is the main subjectofmuch of the fiction in this group, and a subject at SOlne level in most of it. The deep reliance of individuals, especially children, upon a treacherous myth that collapses under their weight provides much of the thematic interest of this work. By far the most interesting example is Barbara Gowdy's third novel, Mister Sandman (Somerville House, 268, $24.95). Dazzling seems an inadequate adjective for this fantastically creative work, which gushes over with bizarre takeoffs of a family wallowing in the sizzling aftermath of its own meltdown. Die Blechtrommel, GOOter Grass's 1959 novel, is the only work I can think of to compare it with, although Mister Sandman offers sexual politics, instead of totalitarian politics as a theme. (Is that the reason, one wonders, why Gowdy's fiction sells so well in Germany?) Instead of spreading out over a nation, this novel zeroes in on the hormone-driven members of one Toronto family, establishing them as caricatures of known roles trapped in invisible strait-jackets of dishonesty. Gowdy invigorates their story with an absurd sense of humour laid over a foundation of the vulgar jokes and double-entendre cliches that the characters use -for what passes as language and communication. Something like Grass's Oskar, the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 66, NUMBER 1, WINTER 1996/7 192 LETTERS IN CANADA 1995 youngest family member appears to be an idiot savante with a talent for painted musical commentary. Her father puzzles over her constant mimicry of sounds when she can't be taught to speak: 'Not that Joan had been reincarnated but that she was deliberately forswearing words out of an instinctive sense that it only took one to flatten you. On his bad days he wondered if her muteness wasn't highly evolved. He wondered why people didn't hit the dirtwhenever other people talked. He wonderedwhat possessed people to read! On his bad days he found nothing as discouraging as the sight of reflection that has been dislodged from the preserving climate of the mind and then arranged - all dried out and shrunken - on paper.' With straightforward and colloquial styles that completely fit her caricatures, Gowdy sets up the sexual dimensions of a family in which each character believes he or she is the only one with a sexual dimension. Always indirectly, through the changing perspectives of different characters, Gowdy builds a plot of mutual deceit that can onlybe resolved by the innocent musician who composes her own version of their lives and presents it to them in a dramatic climax. The reader is steered towards a comedic reconsideration of sexual stereotyping within the family. However, it is the bubbling-over of Gowdy'S imagination that is the most memorable characteristic of this book. Each of the twenty-three chapters reads like a highly charged short story, filled with unexpected twists and details. Gowdy succeeds in making the totallybizarreseem totally familiar. The novel leaves me with a great respect for the mind that hatched and assembled all these curiosities. Equally hard on families, Between Families and the Sky (Goose Lane, 234, $17.95), Alan Cumyn's second novel, is organized in...