\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWlarger project, by the F. P. Grève Seminarwhich will, one hopes, be able togather and translate that part of Grove'swork that is presently inaccessible to thescholars and critics most interested inhim.The Grève Seminar is an informalgroup of those interested in exploringGreve's European connections as well ashis Canadian ones. Future projects mayinclude translations of Greve's prefacesto his translations of authors such as WilliamPater and John Ruskin, and anauthoritative bibliography. Finally Groveis beginning to get the kind of criticalattention he longed for when he said inIt Needs to Be Said: "In all those countrieswhere literary criticism is a reality,its attitude toward the contemporaiyauthor who produces or tries to produceworks of literary art gives that authorwhat he need more than anything else... it gives him an ideal audience."HERSELF IN PLACEMARGERY FEEISABEL HUGGAN, The Elizabeth Stories. Oberon,$14.95·ALAN PEARSON, In a Bright Land. GoldenDog, $6.95.EACH OF THESE TWO NOVELS locates acharacter in a provocative setting andmakes that character aware of herself insuch a place. In Isabel Huggan's TheElizabeth Stories, the local spirit is amean, peevish thing, belonging to smalltownOntario. In Alan Pearson's In aBright Land, it is voluptuous and indulgent,soothing and teasing the expatriateswho enjoy life in a Spanish coastal town.Like Lives of Girls and Women, TheElizabeth Stories presents a series ofautonomous narrative episodes. Gatheredtogether, these stories acquire momentumand carry the narrator forward toadulthood.The stories are set in Garten, a townsomewhere near Guelph. Although wescarcely know what it looks like, Gartenis a powerful setting. Its systems ofhuman association make relationshipsmeagre, and its blunt sanctions on individualbehaviour weigh on the storyteller.These systems and sanctions make Gartena coercive regime. The town's greatestpower is its capacity to deny and distortpassions by exposing them — or threateningto do so. As Elizabeth's friend observesin the last story, "Garten was fullof people who might tell on you . . . youwere never really safe anywhere."As a little girl, Elizabeth is susceptibleto this kind of exposure. She brutalizes asquat, sickly companion, and her fiercedeed makes her notorious. Her sexualencounter with another nine-year-oldgets town-wide publicity: schoolyardgraffiti name and picture the incident,and the boy's family has to leave town.Passions have resounding consequences.Subsequent humiliations also draw attentionto Elizabeth. Rather bulky, andbig for her age, she is cast as à boy inGarten's annual ballet recital. On stage,her bulging shape and misery are shownto the whole town : "I am in a nightmareout of which I cannot wake." She tries toshatter the nightmare by declaring herself:As we skip forward to the footlights, I canfeel it, I can feel the pressure building.The summoning of the dark abyss. Theothers step back and I lean forward, on theedge of the stage. Into the darkness, driven."I'm really a girl," I shout, my voice horriblyhigh and tinny. The noise in the gymlulls and I shout again, as loud as I can,into the startled silence. "I'm really a girl,I'm really a girl!"But her self-assertion only leads to amore thorough disgrace.Time goes on and some of the pressure163