\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

OPINIONS & NOTESWestern Hill (University of Queensland,$14.95: pa. $7.95) sets its story in an Australiantown the author has relied on before; ifthere is such a thing as a suburban style, thisis it. Shiva Naipaul's A Hot Country (Collins,$19.95) i s overwritten in another way — burdeninga story by trying to elongate it into anovel, Naipaul finds violence in the politicallife of an invented South American countrycalled Cuyama, and despairs of the emptinesshe finds in the political attitudes of ordinarypeople. They "had been duped," he writes,"out of the knowledge of their condition.That, in the end, was the true oppression."People want, he says, "a new, uncontaminatedworld of their own making," but in theirhearts they lack both the power and the desireto create, so accept slogans instead, to hidetheir emptiness most of all from themselves.(3) When you reach 25, you celebrate, andwhen you reach 3, you stop. There have beena number of quarter-century celebrations recently,those of Prism international and CanadianLiterature among them. In Australia,Quadrant, too, is celebrating survival, with a500-plus page anthology of essays, stories, andpoems from the previous two-and-a-half decadescalled, not provocatively, QuadrantTwenty-Five Years (University of Queensland,$22.50). Contributors range from the filmdirector Bruce Beresford to performer BarryHumphries to poets David Malouf and JudithRodriguez. Surprisingly, the essays in retrospectseem conservative and the stories conventional;but an eye for poetry has over theyears proved remarkably fine. And the anthologyas a whole is an instructive guide tosome of the literary and social interconnectionsin Australia in our time. Maurice Gee'sSole Survivor (Faber & Faber, £7.95, $25.95)is volume three in the trilogy that began withGee's magnificent Plumb. This work followsthe Plumb family's futures into a third generation,into the life of Raymond Sole and some1960's and 70's experiments with drugs,sexual variations, indifferent independence,and political ambition. It's cast as a journalist'smemoirs : a reluctant removal of masksthat previous characters and novels have puton, and an admission of limits to the family'sProtestant heritage. If the novel lacks bothPlumb's psychological force and Meg's verbalhigh intensity, it's an estimable literary conclusionnevertheless, full of mordant discoveriesabout the observer's involvement in the liveshe claims only to see.W.H.N.204