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Initially, one has the impression that Flies ofa Summer is meant to be a fantasy novel,although still haunted by Kocan's prisonexperiences. Here, however, the prisoners areneither "criminals" nor "lunatics", butgenerations of children bred by ambitious butdunderheaded Margai explicitly for the serviceof powerful and mysterious Gorgai. TheseMargai, although resembling the brutal screwsin The Treatment and The Cure, derive theirliterary heritage from science fiction, or frommore traditional fantasy figures, such asTolkien's goblins, the bickering Uruk-hai. TheGorgai, apparent prime-movers of the systeminstituted in Kocan's primitive future world, alsohave a fantastic heritage: they live in distantmountains, like the Wicked Witch of the West,or Sauron of Mordor.Yet as inhabitants of a fantasy world, thesymbolic function of these creatures as agents ofevil, or some such, is ambiguous. They oftenappear to be thoughtless, rather than malicious,towards the children in their charge, and pitifullydumb, rather than cruel. This is especially trueof the Margai:[Flat Nose] does not know how to build aproper Margai hall. He's just going by hisrecollection of how the old one looked andso keeps giving us the wrong orders. . .Normally Flat Nose would be irritated to thepoint of slaughtering half of us, but now heseems sulky and remote and hardly seems tocare what we do so long as we're busy ...The Margai, however, seem too preoccupiedslaughtering each other for the narrator's fear tocarry any real weight. They would thus appearto represent the imposition of indifferent powerupon humanity. But the meaning, source andresult of this exertion of power remainsannoyingly vague, both symbolically and interms of the book's created world. Nor, in theend, is it made to seem particularly terrifying.Indeed, in some ways, these Margai havecreated, as if by accident, a literal state of idealinnocence for their child prisoners to live in. Butdespite this blurring, the Margai are notindividualised enough to function in a realisticinstead of a symbolic mode. They are never"people", in the sense of possessing a Forsterian"roundness". Even regarded as "flat" characters,they are, in the main, minimally sketchedstereotypes.The same observation may be made of mostof the children, the "Flies of a Summer" referredWESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989to in the title. Perhaps the most interesting partof Kocan's novel is his attempt to render thesechildren as innocent of good and evil, and,especially, of time. They have no history andonly the vaguest concept of their future. All theyknow is that they live to mate and then to besent into slavery. This, perhaps, is intended tofunction as a sort of broadly sketched allegoryfor ta condition humaine. There are, of course,important exceptions to this general rule - therebels who generate the tale. The mostimportant is Rowan, the born leader, whofunctions as a sort of heroic Christ figure. It isRowan's adventurous spirit that leads thenarrator upon an expedition which results inmeeting the "Grown Up Man". This Man,apparently some remnant of a previouscivilisation (perhaps our own), reveals to thenarrator a glimpse of the past, and hence thefuture, which in this world, innocent of history,is like knowledge of Good and Evil.The mysterious Grown Up Man is thus thecatalyst who provides the knowledge whichfinally distinguishes this season's "flies" from allthe other generations. Yet with this character, too,Kocan is caught between the fantastic and therealistic mode. On the one hand, in the fantasymode, he functions like Merlin, some extratemporalDr Who, a prophet from the past; onthe other hand, in the realistic mode, he ispresented as a degenerate hermit with an alcoholproblem. Perhaps he is intended to function asan ideal symbol of human weakness. But if so,he is neither ideal nor human enough to beconvincing. Again, his epithet, the "Grown UpMan", as well as many of the other propernames, may lead us to believe we are in a worldof juvenile fantasy. Indeed references to"booguls" - Kocan's bogey-men - tempts usto regard the book purely as a piece of children'sfiction. Yet this mode, also, is belied by some ofthe language and explicit sexuality, which wouldseem outside the generally accepted conventionsof such writing.Despite these reservations, Flies of a Summeris still a good read, as we, with the narrator, seeka sense of the past for an idea of the future,beyond the idyllic, timeless life of the childrenin the village. Emotionally, the book is about thecoming to terms with the termination of thisparadise as the children are brought to the stageof breeding (there are echoes here of the Fall ofAdam and Eve, but the event is regarded asfulfilling) and slavery (too vague to be113