The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

dramatic modes. Here the dramatic rendering
dominates, enlivened by character
oppositions, dialogue, and Mitchell's anecdotal
humour. Through most of the novel,
the lyric mode in less developed; even
Ireland's reflective moments are largely past
time, past tense recollections of experience.
Only in the prison sequence does a profound
interior experience, in the form of a
dream, become present, not remembered,
and Ireland's engagement of life becomes
evocative, poetic, and immediate.
For Art's Sake does engage Mitchell's most
important continuing concerns, but its
greatest strengths are those of his drama
more than of his fiction.
Expansions
Sharon Butala
The Fourth Archangel. HarperCollins, $24.95 cl.
Peter Stevens
Dorothy Livesay: Patterns in a Poetic Life. ECW,
$14.95 pa.
Reviewed by Claire Wilkshire
Sharon Butala's The Fourth Archangel is an
apocalyptic novel set in the town of Ordeal
in the Palliser Triangle (neighbouring
towns bear the cheery names Remorse,
Solitude and Crisis). Rural communities
are dying, the drought has lasted seven
years, and the millennium is at hand. The
novel features an unusual assortment of
characters: the seventeen-year-old town
slut who Finds Jesus and exhibits (maybe)
the stigmata, the repressed schoolmarm
with an obsession about abortions who's
losing her grip, the reclusive Ph.D. searching
for himself in William Francis Butler's
The Great Lone Land (a nineteenth-century
exploration narrative about the prairies),
and the quietly powerful Zena Lavender, who
organizes the town's widows. The action
stems from the threat that Ordeal will lose
its post office (that's rural decline in microcosm)
and the ensuing community protest,
but there are other things going on as well
Various community members are
plagued by visions of the past (ghostly
homesteaders, a huge and invisible herd of
cattle which leaves real footprints, dreams
of the buffalo and the Indians) as well as
the future (whirlwinds and annihilation).
In a more realistic vein, two relationships
are explored: the liaison between Amy
Sparrow (protagonist/potter/activist) and
Neil Locke (the reclusive Ph.D.), and the
three-year-old marriage of Jessie and Val
Sheridan (she's from town; he's a failing
farmer). The novel is about tradition and
transition, family and community, the tension
between rural and urban life, between
the right to live where one chooses and the
ability of an economy to sustain a population
(and vice versa).
So far so good: the lives of men and
women in hard farming land are familiar
ground for Butala, and she spices things up
here with religion and revelation. The
weakness of the novel lies not in its imaginative
conception but in its uninspired narrative.
Butala's fiction is characterized by an
unfortunate lack of ambiguity. The reader
is repeatedly provided with an excess of
information. At a community rally organized
to protest government policies which
contribute to rural decline, Jessie "had a
moment when she felt glad she was present,
and much to her surprise, almost a social
activist. This last thought struck her as
ridiculous, then embarrassed her, and then
made her feel proud." This kind of
sequence, an unnecessary description of
predictable emotions, is common in the
novel. At the next public rally, Amy tries to
persuade Lowell Hartshorne to introduce a
petition. Hartshorne agrees, but he is visibly
uncomfortable with the idea, "shifting
his stance, looking over his shoulder...
studying his shoes." As if it were not already
abundantly clear that Hartshorne is a good
guy in a tight ethical spot, Butala plunges