\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWshifts off Elizabeth. Recrimination is stillthe liveliest action of those around her,but now she is liable to be punished forothers' crimes rather than her own, andfinally she is only a witness to the book'slast episode of passion and communityvengeance.At the end, Elizabeth has made plansto leave this place that denies dignityand consolation. Nothing in Garten canbe cherished. Unlike Lives and Girls andWomen, which is in many ways thisbook's fancier elder sister, The ElizabethStories shuts the door on a diy, damagingepoch, done with it. But the storiesare written with such subtle energy thatthis reader would be glad to hear thatHuggan has had to open the door toGarten again — if only to slam it shutonce more.Huggan's fictional Garten is made upof social liaisons — stunted and disablingones. It has little visual dimension. Pearson'sIn a Bright Land refers to anentirely different aesthetic, embracingvisual detail for its own sake. Pearsontirelessly catalogues the sense data thatreconstruct Spanish coastal places andexpatriate goings-on, and his skill indoing so is formidable.The narrative's protagonist, Claire(daughter of a British "industrialist,"former U.N. translator, beginning poet),is especially receptive to such sense data.She approves of artistic expression thatrescues sensation from temporariness andoblivion, and arranges its mementoes tocreate "syntactic" excitement. " Ί likesurfaces in general,' " she says. " 'Theyare the best part of life.' " "Depths" arelikely to disclose only cliches. So she isprepared to risk the appearance of incoherencethat can come about when lifeor art has no visible goal or argument.But this stance is more than aesthetic.It is also moral because it offers criteriafor conducting one's life, and because itgoverns Claire's response not just to164table-settings and doorways, but also toother human beings. Claire's lover, Jane,is lovable insofar as she fulfils an imageryat once artistic and commercial. Loungingin the sun, she is a "picture"; excitingdesire in Claire, she is like a "promotionaldisplay" for shoes, or she looks"as bright and fresh as if she'd juststepped, fragrantly, out of the latest issueof Vogue magazine."Stimulating sensations accumulate tobuild to heights of eroticism. But theseerotic heights, achieved without the contraintsof argument or abstraction, seemfinally a rather precarious place to takea stand. At first, the rationale seems adequate."To make one's life a work of art,that was the vital thing," Claire tells herself;"and any work of art for her meantthe fusion of pleasure and insight." Yetthese two aesthetic dimensions do notreadily fuse in the text. "Insight" is oftendisplaced, showing up in stiff, imposingconversation among the characters, or inClaire's "reflections." As for "pleasure"— it can be retrieved from documented"surfaces," but its further potential isunleashed by urges towards a brutal sexuality— aggressive and militaristic.For the most part, this brutish aggressionrears up only in Claire's fantasies.But the shape of the novel challenges theboundaries between private fantasy andpublic consensus. At first, these challengesseem innocent enough — playful tamperingwith the reader's expectations andwith the novelistic mechanisms by whichactualities are verified and distinguishedfrom fantasies. But the narrative's conclusionshows that a reprisal is not harmless,and overturns our notion that fantasyis what does not happen. Is eroticsadism a plan rather than a wish? Dothe gestures of authoritarian militarismspring not from political ambitions butfrom fantasies of bloodlust?Claire, whose consciousness is themeans by which these possibilities are