The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

however. In fact, the most sexually-charged
scene between Maria and Jim (who never
do make love this second time around),
though it has great potential for
Harlequinesque overwriting, avoids it by
MacSkimming's honest appraisal of Jim.
The turbulent mixed emotions that Jim
feels upon meeting Maria again in such
bizarre circumstances are too humanly
ambivalent for melodrama. The partlyrecriminating,
partly-forgiving dialogue
between these two ex-lovers is shockingly
familiar; the author has apparently been
there before, as another title of his attests
(On Your Own Again: The Down-to-Earth
Guide to Getting Through a Divorce or
Separation and Getting on with Your Life).
MacSkimming sees through Jim's posturing
and rationalizations, as Jim himself only
begins to do at the end of the novel. The
male ego is superbly rendered in all its
blind glory, as Jim dashes impetuously from
government offices to clandestine meetings
with politicians of unascertainable alliances,
to Maria's suburban hideaway, heedless of
the warnings by higher-ups and Maria herself
that his actions are endangering both
his and Nick's safety. Jim's rashness and
tenacity are not always foolish, however; it
is a similar quality that enables him to
assess his emotional shortcomings in an
astonishingly direct manner, as when his
"blunt, tweedy shrink" advises him to "go
cold turkey on women for a while ...
because it would stop you from kicking
them in the cunt". Jim immediately recognizes
the truth in this offensive statement
— he had caused pain without taking
responsibility for it — and he attempts to
amend his behavior. Later, he is put to
another severe test of his capacity for love.
When he finally locates his son, Nick kicks
him, figuratively, in his own genitals, with a
declaration of his infatuation with Maria
and his ingratitude in the face of his
father's deep concern and determined
efforts to rescue him from the government
gorillas. Jim's sense of fatherly responsibility
is perhaps stronger than that which he
feels towards women, and his restraint and
understanding in this last blow to his ego are
the heroic emotions that finally redeem him.
A Nice Gazebo is a collection of short stories
that, by comparison, are mundane in
setting and plot. Each one is a careful slice
of everyday life. The stories are finely
crafted, with careful attention to rhythm.
The title story alternates its subject between
anecdotes from the lives of the speaker's
unruly children and the life of her male
friend. In an irreverent, off-beat style,
Robyn Sarah describes minute incidences
in everyday lives that succinctly reveal character.
The male friend appreciates simple
things like eating his packed lunch alone in
the basement of his store, "a kind of temple
he makes for himself." He confesses to the
narrator that when he has such good food
packed in his knapsack, he has everything
he wants in life and doesn't even need
money. The narrator's mixed feelings about
this potential lover form the basis for the
story which is also filled with meditations
on the meaning of life. Digressions into
dream analysis, the conjugations of French
verbs that suggest the repetitiousness of
life, and the recollection of a tedious summer
job made tolerable by her lunchtime
consumption of Plato's Dialogues— all are
juxtaposed with her awe and admiration of
the apparent simplicity of her friend. How
can he be happy with less than I have?, she
seems to be asking. She answers her question
with the metaphor of the gazebo, a
place of creative play for grownups. He has
"a nice gazebo," whereas she's lost the richness
of her own inner life in the exigencies
of rearing a family and holding a boring
job. The fact that she loses her friendship as
well as her gazebo would make this a
melancholy story if it weren't for the
upbeat humor with which the narrator
observes all things: losses, achievements, a
good day or a gray one, are all revealed