[.ca] Poached Eggs on Toast (ISBN 0002005840)

A woman writes of women for women:
The success of Frances Itani's novel "Deafening" catapulted her to among the highest ranks of women authors. A stunning account of a young deaf girl's life in tumultuous times expressed a measure of the life of a soldier's bride. Something of that vein is found among the pieces in this collection of Itani's short stories. Bracketed between "Clayton" and the Arthur of the title story are twenty stories of women's lives. Most are wives, many alone for one reason or another. They are a firmly self-contained set, keeping husbands, partners, siblings and even supposedly close friends at a respectable distance. Although these narratives were written over a span of many years, mostly preceding "Deafening", some of the pieces bear a relation to that novel - women whose men are in a conflict. Canadian peace keepers in the Balkans left families behind. One of these is Simone. With their daughter, Karla, Simone is learning to live alone after nine years of marriage. The Bosnian conflict has pulled her husband Alan to "half the world away". Truly living alone, since no vision of her husband penetrates her immediate self concerns, Simone lashes out at whatever separated Alan from them. In "Sarajevo", Marta flies to Croatia to be with her husband. Geoff has had hair-raising experiences as a peace-keeper. With a Serb gun at his head, he quips about the man's having such poor aim he "must stand so close to shoot me". He's also suffered a broken arm during an attempt to kidnap him, walking away from a cocked machine gun. He's a dedicated worker - the first out every morning and the last to return in the evening. Marta's aware how he believes in his work, he wants right, not might, to rule. He doesn't see Muslims, Croats, Serbs - "just humans needing help". Children, endless number of children parade past him. The Bosnian misery is so great Marta finds it nearly unbearable. All those hurt people are "victims of their own war" and she regrets Geoff's dedication to help - so much so she regrets loving him. Finally, released, they arrive back in Prince Edward Island, where it's Marta who declares she's "earned the right to cry this hard". Finally, "In the Name of Love", Jule arrives in Bosnia to "Extricate Carl" as she pens it in a note to herself. Jule, unlike Marta, is in the midst of the conflict. Shelling rattles windows. Angry men accost her in the street, but she's unaware of whether they're seeking sex or berating her for being a foreigner. An older woman, begging, recognises her as "a fellow Catholic" and demands money. Jule remains indifferent to her pleas. As does her husband to her pleas to leave the site of such hate and suffering. "Extricate Carl" - the litany is repeated mutely to herself. Carl merely intones, "There's work to be done", but Jule will have none of that. She glares at his sleeping form - "Open one eye or I'll leave you". Not all Itani's stories are of women involved in war. She portrays women who deal with the dilemmas of family and households. In "Earthman Pointing", Roseanne and her twin sister Tibbs cope with personal obsessions. Roseanne will not touch pork or bacon due to a pig's killing and consuming a local farmer. Tibbs, hearing of a man drowning in the local river, forces her husband to drive fifty kilometres to a country spring to fetch water. The title story concerns a man with a different mania. Weary of the same breakfast each day, he demands more variation of his wife. Her response leads him along a strange fixation. These stories are a litany of despair, conditional love and introspection. A powerful writer, the author has created the identities of many different individuals under a range of circumstances. None of her women seem contrived or artificial, yet there are few readers who could identify with them all. They are highly individual, testimony to Itani's ability to conceive fictional characters. Their uniqueness and the stories they impart should give the reader pause in taking up this book. It's tempting to simply page through the series, eager to learn what new personage or events will emerge on the next pages. That would be a mistake. Itani isn't bringing you into a room full of people as if this book was a literary cocktail party. Instead, these are people to be encountered at a measured pace, one at a time, preferably with an interval between them. Even selecting stories at random might be a suitable approach. \ostephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada\c