Welcome to a tea party in which an author dedicated to exploring new worlds turns the tables on her flat-earth reviewers L LET`S TURN convention on its head and imagine a situation where a writer gets to review her critics at a literary tea party. Behold the author (that`s me) dressed in what passes for her Sunday best, a denim dress with protective padding in the shoulders. She is serving tea in the lounge of a stately Toronto hotel. The fire crackles cosily and many long, lead-panelled windows comfortably shut out the city. Our author - who has done some reviewing herself - knows there are no formal rules for book reviewing, which started in France in the mid-1600s as summaries of scientific texts. In the last century, reviews included long excerpts and served as a substitute for buying the book. Now reviews, often seen as a service to the reader, occupy a no-mans-land between academic and popular taste. Still, as an author, 1 naturally have some idealistic notions about book reviewing. 1 like Alexander Pope`s list of qualities for a critic - integrity, modesty, tact, courage, and awareness of the critic`s own limitations. 1 also believe a well-written review gives us not only the reviewer`s personal reaction: it adds to our knowledge of a book. The book in this case is The Last of the Golden Girls, my novel about three women friends and their sexual competition for men during two summers in their lives. At our party, I`m going back to my reviews as a reader who wants to gain understanding of the author`s work. (And perhaps I`ll find insights to help her practise her craft, even if - and why shouldn`t this be true - the wisdom is embedded in a savage review.) As the tea tray arrives, out author scans the room to see who`s shown up again to do their worst, or their best, depending on how she looks at it. And what does out author see? A roomful of strangers of both sexes, of varying ages and mainly Anglo-Saxon heritage watching her balefully. Each pair of alien eyes has feasted on her novel from cover to cover and pronounced it just the thing or not the thing at all. Yes, each pair of strangers` eyes has read the story of the first uninhibited summer told in the voice of 14-year-old Jude Bell. And then read Jude`s account of a summer 10 years later when the same friends find themselves repeating teenage games. The first section is traditional storytelling; the second part shifts into an ironic and sometimes surreal account of Jude`s loss of innocence. It ends as a summer regatta turns into an apocalyptic disintegration of Jude`s inner self. Suddenly the eyes of our author alight on the bespectacled face of her old nemesis - the now retired Globe and Mail critic William French. French is an advocate of literal-minded reviewing whose members constitute what the author calls the Flat Earth Society. The Flat Earthers are a community of readers who want fiction to be literally true to life. They are usually incensed by novels that play with form or use poetic language. Only an autumn or so ago, French, their gentlemanly spokesman, trashed the author`s book, claiming its unrealistic apocalyptic ending made the novel irrelevant. What else could she do but go on TV and challenge his literal-minded approach to literature? Give it up, Bill, she said on TV Ontario`s "Imprint," and lo - he did, six months later, claiming he had a retirement plan up his sleeve all along. There, there. The author is getting excited. And it`s her job as a hostess to put her guests at ease. Perhaps his review won`t be as savage as she remembers. Oh dear. She almost chokes on an asparagus sandwich. It`s worse. "It`s tantalizing to contemplate what this novel might have been, what peaks it might have scaled if it had fulfilled its early promise. It could have been reminiscent of something written, say, by Erica Jong with the help of Mary McCarthy in her prime ... but Swan, alas, isn`t in the same league..." Yes indeed! The author is found guilty of not writing a book that is reminiscent (an intriguing word) of not one but two famous women writers. What is the matter with our author anyhow? Why did she choose her own style when she could have been like one or even better - a blend of them both? As for the novel`s surrealistic passages, French says these sections in part two "merely seem pretentious" Admittedly, I`ve forgotten his praise for the opening section "the most vivid description I`ve yet encountered of the sexual arousal and confusions of a pubescent teen-aged girl..." If only and here we proceed to the author`s second crime - she hadn`t tried to make her novel "something more than a study of women`s friendships" Now there`s a familiar avuncular rebuke. Stick to the cute girl stuff and, whatever you do, don`t make women`s experience into a larger metaphor. Ah me. I`d forgotten what a dismal experience it is to listen to somebody reading a book with a set of expectations I don`t share. What`s more, French is chastising me for breaking rules I deliberately threw out the window in the first place. There`s a commotion in the midst of our tea party. The Globe`s rival, the Toronto Star, has commandeered the tea wagon and its reviewer, Kate Fillion, is shouting to be heard. She`s a contemporary woman -several decades French`s junior. Gratified, the author hands her a teacup. Some of the adolescent scenes are "wonderfully drawn," says Fillion, who favourably compares The Last of the Golden Girls with Margaret Atwood`s Cat`s Eye. Atwood`s girls victimize each other to win group acceptance while Swan`s characters play out their competition sexually, using men as pawns, she cleverly notes. But she finds the transition from childhood to womanhood "often uncertain, if not downright unbelievable." The author sighs. Another Flat Earther. Fillion attributes the problem she has believing in the story to "raging hormones," which she says "hijack the narrative" This provocative comment is left hanging. I`m not sure whose raging hormones have got out of control. Perhaps the author`s. God knows, they do from time to time. But heck, this is getting silly. The author leads Fillion. gently back to her seat. Factual accuracy isn`t important here, she whispers in Fillion`s ear. First-person stories are interpretations. If we don`t believe it, chances are the author hasn`t created a convincing voice or has lek out crucial information. Or maybe the reviewer is too literal-minded to imagine an experience she didn`t have in the first place? "I daresay," Miss Fillion demurs, "I am not the only one who missed the ... rites of femininity." Now up jumps Anne Denoon of Books in Canada. Denoon, who likes her tea bitter, sums up this coming-of-age story by noting "the unabashed misogyny that only female writers can get away with nowadays." I sip my tea, giggling. The author - a misogynist breathing witchy fire on her own sex? Truth to tell, I suspect I am easier on my own gender. Perhaps Denoon brings up misogyny because my novel expresses the ambivalence women can feel toward each other? Ah, Denoon admits she doesn`t know how she`s supposed to feel about the main character, Jude Bell, who Denoon says is self important, hypocritical, deluded, and given to statements that range from the silly to the offensive. Obviously, Denoon does know how she feels about Jude: she dislikes her. But why is Denoon chiding the author for a failure to provide positive images of women? Is Denoon asking us to pretend that female characters never have low self esteem or a lack of trust in their own instincts? Would she forbid stories about female anorexics? What a bore that female characters (like women in real life) are pressured to act in ways that fulfil the demands of others. Personally, I`m not interested in presenting positive images of women. Of course, my position is a little confusing. I`m also not interested in stories that lack an awareness of sexist attitudes. Would I bother to read a novel by somebody who still believes the slave trade is a viable business? And then a doubt creeps in. Perhaps I let my own character down. Perhaps, like Denoon, I was angry with my narrator, Jude Bell, for using her sexuality at others` expense. Shaken, I reach for the Valium the hotel proprietor has thoughtfully placed for such a moment under a spare tea cosy. And presto - before the crowded room stands Jude herself Her bikini is still dripping from a recent swim and, admittedly, she looks a little underdressed on this windy afternoon, but nevertheless she`s there in her best mythical form, ready to explain herself to anyone who`ll listen. Shame on you, Denoon, she says, wiping herself off with a tea napkin. What do you have against your own sex anyway? I`m just a mixed-up young woman who`s been too impressed by money and power. I`m not perfect and neither are you. The author plunged you into my consciousness to recreate a young woman`s experience of sexual alienation. It`s not always a comfortable place to be and you resented going there. So be it. Not everybody found it so uncomfortable, a voice says calmly from the back of the room. Craning their necks, Jude and the author spot Barbara Novak of the London Free Press. Reading the novel was like getting to know someone who turns into a best friend, says Novak. Politely, she accepts her cup from a beaming Jude. "Contemporary fiction would be hard-pressed to come up with a more engaging narrator than Jude Bell..." How heartening! I`ve learned nothing new about the book, but now Jude can relax. There`s a reader out there who`s been through it too. Smiling widely, the author suddenly spies a cluster of hostile faces looking her way with - shudder - indisputably malevolent glances. Quick! A fresh pot of the hotel`s finest Earl Grey and a new tray of cucumber sandwiches all around. The first to put a hand out is the androgynous Gerri Young from Canadian Materials, who hisses to the assembled room that he (or she) would not recommend The Last of the Golden Girls to anyone. Our Gerri found the book had too much "grating, graphic, unpleasant sex." It`s possible, Gerri growls, that those who like that sort of thing (grating, graphic, unpleasant sex) will probably enjoy the novel. Scowling into her tea, Elizabeth Godley of the Vancouver Sun grumbles agreement, The first third, she says, is "mildly pleasurable and the last two thirds "distinctively painful" Godley seems reticent about enjoying herself. Mildly pleasurable! Was it perhaps pleasurable? Oh no, says Godley, who quickly adds that she was also bewildered by the surrealistic love scenes, which she describes to the room as the narrator`s "unnerving habit of suddenly seeing her friends as insects:` The author jostles her way through the clump of nay-sayers to Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen. Mr. Spears accepts his tea with a look of confusion. It`s possible, he tells the grumps, to ignore the parts you don`t like such as the "silly" cataclysmic ending and concentrate on "the intimate picture of adolescence` and "the raw edges of adulthood" The puzzled-looking Mr. Spears has problems with the author`s use of irony. For instance, he ponders long and hard the heading of part two - "Winning" - before concluding that it`s sardonic. The author`s greatest insight, he tells the silent room, isn`t the recognition that these sexual games -are destructive, but that Jude Bell sometimes longs to go back to those summers and play them all over again. Nobody says a word, but I wonder if Mr. Spears (who tries harder) hasn`t missed the point of my irony again. The author hands the floor over to the unnamed reviewer from the University of Toronto Bookstore Review. He`s seen the author "blasting" Canada`s national book reviewer on television, he tells the crowd, and he`s not scared to admit he didn`t like the ending either. "It`s cluttered and confusing, with too many easy satirical targets and a strange bit of violence we have had no warning of." That off his chest, he`s all smiles. He liked the book after all, he says. "It`s funny, serious, sexy, and very observant. I didn`t know girls were like that at all" At the back of the line is the Saturday Night critic, Alberto Manguel, the only one at the tea party the author knows personally. Manguel is a controversial critic because he will review books by friends whether he likes the books or not. In a literary community, he argues that writers (who are the ones who care most about writing and mostly know one another anyhow) can`t avoid reviewing each other`s books. He phones his acquaintances who are going to get negative reviews and tells them why he doesn`t like their book. When I didn`t get the tell-tale phone call, I still worried that he`d err on the tough side to prove his theory of critical transcendence. Listening to Manguel again, I am struck by his insight into the novel`s story about summer landscapes as a despoiled paradise where "as in the other garden, the forbidden mystery is sex" I am also impressed by his lack of prudery. "In an ideal world, the adolescent Jude would have recognized her sexuality as a blissful and creative force. Instead she learns that this, and all other elements that combine to make her what she has become, are instruments of competition or torture, and that she is expected by her peers not to blossom and nurture but to win at all costs." How clever, how knowledgeable is the delightful Manguel! And how susceptible is the author to his waves of approbation! She pours him another tea - heavily sugared. Is it because Manguel sees sexuality as a positive force that he`s able to talk about the ideas in the book?, she wonders. Like all novels, The Last of the Golden Girls is a test of the reviewer`s prejudices. Not that the charming Manguel is without his criticisms. He finds those love scenes written in straightforward prose "trite," and blames the English language for failing to provide words for erotic love. He prefers the scenes where the narrator lapses into hallucinatory images of the landscape to describe her erotic feelings. The tea is getting cold and there are still so many critics to be served! Balancing a tray over her head, our author jostles her way toward a group of enthusiastic reviewers - mostly from literary journals and downtown Toronto weeklies. Susan Cole of Now says the novel is "an explicit journey into the soul of a desperate woman" Linda Genereux of the now defunct Metropolis tells me something I hadn`t realized about my own character - that she`s both a predator and a victim. Genereux also has a perceptive reason for Jude`s behaviour..."a bright, articulate woman who feels constantly out of place. Presented from a female perspective, the character`s desire to quell these feelings of dislocation are manifest in her lust and continual need to conquer those around her, through sex" Thoughtfully, I put down my own cup and say good-bye to my guests. Have I learned anything new from them? Mostly I`ve learned what they don`t like. They don`t like stories about sexually promiscuous heroines who`ve lost their self-respect. They do like stories about adolescent girls who betray each other. And they tend to confuse non-fiction with telling the truth. Perhaps the author can`t do much about their sexual prudery or their literal-mindedness. Still, she can`t help thinking as she goes out the door how mutually beneficial it could be if the members of the Flat Earth Society would let themselves go along on a journey to the New World.