\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

OPINIONS & NOTEShomosexual and thus, in the punningsystem of the book, a queen both like andunlike Habella), bears the curious name,"Matthias Harp" — or the wedding ofscience ("math" is the root) and music.And then there is Habella's husband,Fred Smith. Compared to the others,onomastically and otherwise, Fred is flatindeed.As the barest summary of the novel'splot indicates, The Bee Book, for all itsexoticism, is yet another modern tale ofunsuccessful marriage. We might chartthe action as follows: Girl meets boy;girl marries boy; girl grows sexually frustratedwith boy (and, in fairness, the boyisn't too excited by this girl either) ; girlcontemplates affair (a story we've readbefore) ; girl, instead, turns her bedroominto a hive; girl flies away. Literally.One day Habella is a housewife, metaphoricQueen Bee, mother of four offspring,and the next day she is gone,literal queen bee, presumably swarmingin the treetops, photographs of which(taken from a bee's eye view) constitutethe last "utterance" of the novel. Norshould we be surprised by this ending. InMatthias's Preface there are dark hintsof Habella's disappearance or demise,including her last letter to Matthiaswhich ends : "I offer you now these lucidwords. I will taste a metaphysical passion.I can't live out the similes of thenormal wife. Tomorrow, I fly to Africa."And she does. If The Bee Book teachesanything, it is that fiction is constrainedonly by the imagination of its writers andreaders, not by restrictive notions ofrealism.The line separating metaphor fromreality is most elastic in Ann Rosenberg'spostmodernist novel. Thus, when Renataearlier comes to visit her friend she isalarmed by Habella's increasing identificationwith the bees she once studiedscientifically: "Habella, you're not abee!" Renata protests. "No, Renata, I'mbecoming a metaphor and that is worse."At the end of the novel, Habella movesfrom metaphor to metamorphosis — andpresumably that is better. At the veryleast, it is less stifling. From the claustrophobicand ultimately unsatisfying marriage— where communication devolvesinto an exchange of sarcastic notes lefton the fridge door — Habella flies into alyrical expanse of cloud, space, open sky.The success of that flight might at firstseem in question. Habella's parting missiveto her children and husband reads:"I have flown to mate with Apis Africanus."There is an ominous suggestionhere of the bees humans refer to as"killer bees." Is this a sign of Habella'sembracing of death? insanity? oblivion?I don't think so. Killer bees kill onlyhigher mammals. Habella has preparedfor her flight by feasting upon RoyalJelly (obtainable at your local healthfood store : a diet guaranteed to turn alowly worker into a queen). She has imbibednectar (etymologically, "overcomingdeath" — that is why the gods drankit). If her diet and thus her metamorphosishas been successful, if her flight isconstrued as literal not metamorphic,then perhaps Habella has indeed becomethe queen of Apis Africanus — no longer"had" but having.Rosenberg can claim this optimistic ifunrealistic conclusion because the structuralistpoetic of the entire novel valorizescontinuities between high and lowmimetic fictional forms as well as betweenso-called higher and lower lifeforms. Like Lévi-Strauss, Rosenberg assumesthat basic ideational structures,patterns of meaning, underlie all humansocieties and inhere in all human statements— from Hopi rituals to Hopkinspoems. The crosscultural and crosslinguisticallusions throughout the textaffirm continuous structures. But Rosenbergalso implies that Lévi-Strauss's universalismis actually quite limited, is,198