\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWClark Blaise has called "subversive," thatleads us back into the story. Rather it isthe kind that pretends to resolve everythingwhile resolving nothing, the patanswer that precludes further questioning.Sharon Drache's The Mikveh Manand Other Stories is another first collectionthat deals mainly with life in theJewish community in Queenstown (i.e.,Kingston) and in an old folks' home inOttawa. Most of the stories are about oldpeople — a 70-year-old rabbi, an 85-yearoldcarpenter, a married couple incapacitatedand near death. Drache clearlysympathizes with her characters, whohave suffered in their lives and are sufferingnow the neglect of the youngergeneration. Their triumphs are few butall the more important for their infrequency.In "Let's Make Music," a 79-year-old man and a 93-year-old womanstage a concert on drums and triangle,and in "A Kitel" another old womanmiraculously rises from her wheelchairand somehow conveys her bedridden husbandto a chapel where they lie downtogether to die beside the Holy Ark. Thecourage that these characters show, however,is not enough to make the storiesmemorable. What Drache fails to conveyis any sense of motivation ; her charactersact but do do not know why. If they areto be seen as heroic, it is the less thanhuman heroism of fairy tales that theyembody.Like Barry Dempster, Sharon Drachesets up potential conflicts which are neverresolved. In "The Meeting," for example,a Jewish MP and Cabinet Minister rekindlesan old romance with a gentilewoman he had known in university. Herhusband is now confined to a mentalhospital and divorce proceedings havebegun. Thus, expectations are arousedabout the nature of the new relationshipthat may develop between the old lovers.But the narrative abruptly shifts to wartimeGermany to focus on the woman'shusband, then five years old. The accountof his sufferings under the Nazis is supposedto prepare us for the revelation onthe final page that he has located hisparents' killers and avenged their deaths.Nothing more is said about the JewishMP's relationship with his old flame."The Scribe" is another story withgreat potential that is marred by psychologicalimplausibility and an absurdlyabrupt ending. The scribe is a youngHasidic artist employed by a wealthy artdealer to create specially-designed copiesof the Torah, one of which the dealerattempts to sell to an old friend as a BarMitzvah gift for her son David. Thewoman balks at the price and a year anda half passes before the family returns tothe art gallery. In that time, the oncepious and unworldly scribe has marriedthe boss's daughter and taken over thegallery. He no longer makes copies of theTorah and seems to have completely abandonedhis principles. What happened tothe ideals of the young scribe? Whatturned him away from precepts so deeplyheld? The author gives us no clues forthe reason for this startling metamorphosis.Both Drache and Dempster, despitetheir abundant powers of invention, haveyet to learn how to get the most out oftheir material. Our best short-story writers— Blaise, Metcalf, Munro, Gallant,Hood — return again and again to thesame voices, the same kinds of characters,places, and situations, not because theyhave no new ideas, but because theyrecognize that there is always more to besaid about the old ones. Whereas theaverage writer never exploits the fullpotential of a situation, the great writernever exhausts it.MICHAEL DARLINGI5O