A girl's best subject is her mother
Anita Brookner
HLUEBEARD'S EGG by Margaret Atwood Cape, £10.95 THE GARDEN OF THE VILLA MOLLINI by Rose Tremain
Hamish Hamilton, £9.95
Canadian women writers seem to be particularly good on the subject of their mothers, effortlessly sustaining a note that is calm, reliable, and devoid of animosity. The two autobiographical stories or frag- ments that open and close Margaret Atwood's latest collection demonstrate her style at its best. It is a style which can seem both offhand and artless when not warmed into reflection, and the slightly chilling Competence of the born writer, who might just occasionally be in need of a stronger subject, can be glimpsed here and there in these tales of woe, told in a little-girl voice that has one grinding one's teeth at the sheer plausibility and predictability of it all.
But Margaret Atwood's mother and father seem to inhabit a different world. It Is, largely, a world of innocence and virtue, qualities which are notably absent from the very mildly sleazy atmosphere of the other stories. Margaret Atwood's mother, an active light-hearted woman, whose only reminiscences are of a weightless and agreeable nature, and her father, with his passionate attention to nature, are in marked contrast to the other characters in the book, however gleefully those other characters are investigated. Apart from the fact that her parents are the only peacefully married couple in the collection, they are described with a gentler and more affec- tionate energy than that which goes into the stories of Yvonne, who follows men on the street on the pretext of wanting to sketch them when her purpose is quite other, or Sally, who can only keep her lover in perspective by insisting on his stupidity, or Loulou, who is so fed up with the gaggle of poets gathered permanently round her table that she goes out and seduces a chartered accountant. Margaret Atwood's mother and father stare at her out of bright blue eyes and ask her very reasonably to see to their ashes after they are dead. Her mother laughs over childish misdemeanours ('We got Hail Columbia
for that') but never fails either the author or the story in which she is embodied, while her father, striking a tree to disen- gage its wealth of green caterpillars, is followed, like the Pied Piper, by every child in the vicinity. When the father has a stroke one feels one's own spirits fall. The innocent pay as high a price for their mortality as the rest of us.
It must have been a curious sensation for Margaret Atwood to realise from an early age that she knew more than her parents ever would, for literary ambition struck her early and she grew to possess the writer's all-seeing eye. Her style, which is simple, straightforward, and free from manner- isms, occasionally gives her a knowing air. There is something of the clever child about her as she continues on her seamless way, and if one cavils at her undoubted gifts it is because one demands more of a writer so eminently qualified to give more. So removed are these stories from the source of true pain, true grief, true terror, or true delight, that there is absolutely no possibility that they could be mistaken for something in which a true investment had been made. The author's feminism, too, seems to be taking odd turns, for the women in these stories are strangely feral, not so much myth as alley-cat. A sneaking sympathy for men can 13e randomly glimp- sed, particulary for Joel, who goes out for a meal and returns to find his room des- troyed and his cat kidnapped by a deserted mistress, or for Walter, who likes his comforts but is doomed to fall in with anorexic women. All these men want is a decent meal, but decent meals are pretty hard to come by in Bluebeard's Egg. On the other hand, junk food is on offer all the time, and the symbolism is not uninten- tional.
Searching for a substantial literary meal, then, is bound to be a disappointing exercise here. One is too often led from one story to the next in order to try to achieve a feeling of fullness. It is the material which is so insubstantial, for the style is expert. There should be a rule which states that writers so gifted must attempt something more difficult. It is too easy for them — and too unrewarding for the reader — when they perform at an undemanding level.
Yet how easily these stories read! This simplicity seems essentially Canadian, yet it cannot be explained away purely in terms of nationality. The dreadful Sally in the title story, nervous, suspicious of her lover, effortlessly able to satirise him, has her dilemma beautifully delineated in a single paragraph. It is the same with Alma and Loulou and Yvonne: Margaret Atwood stalks them and their confusions in words which have nothing confused about them.
The same artlessness is on offer in Rose Tremain's collection, which is, however, slight in comparison. Here too is a writer who seems to have something interesting to say: sadly the artlessness shades off into
mere sketchiness. Women are so good at plunging into the density of appearance and bringing out of it something startling or beguiling that one is frequently dis- appointed when they stop on the near side of revelation. Perhaps their subjects have begun to fail them. Or perhaps they should just try harder. Contemporary criticism is so kind to women writers that they may be enjoying a period of false security. And false security is not what Henry James meant by the real thing.
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