Aritha Van Herk

"Only recently have we come to enjoy some freedom from clothing designed to create an aesthetic of beauty based on physical impairment, elongated waists, squeezed breasts, and bound stomachs and buttocks. It is a wonder we can still walk. And who will be responsible for what those tortures have created? The existence of smelling salts, hysteria, frigidity and shrewishness can all be attributed to uncomfortable underwear."

Arachne Manteia is a heroine like no other. She is a mercurial show more adventurer who has a secret hankering for a suburban home, irreverent without actually being disrespectful, a loner yet in need of a partner for her nonchalant sexual liaisons, a panty sales rep peddling them to all the small towns in Alberta yet personally eschewing the product. According to Ovid, Arachne was a great weaver who boasted that her skill was greater than that of the older Athena. In van Herk's allegorical story, Arachne divulges her secretive life only to her friend Thena. Spidery allusions are abundant and clevery woven into the story. As usual with van Herk, her feminist symbolism is hugely entertaining!

I'm sorry to say I've had this 5-star book on the shelf for a long time. I could have, should have, enjoyed it years ago. show less

I've been wanting to read this for a while. In 1978, the author won a $50,000 prize for the best first novel by a Canadian writer.

This is the story of Judith, who grew up on a pig farm, moved to the city to work as a secretary, but decides to buy her own farm in her mid-twenties. The author has done an amazing job of interspersing childhood events, Judith's affair with her boss in the city, and current events almost seamlessly. The characters are complex and I loved this story....by show more learning about aspects of Judith's life, we understand the choices she made. Great writing, good story. show less

Honestly, I think there's a giant weakness in the middle: Derrick acts as a sounding board to all of the narrator's complex, tho artful and insightful, thots. He asks simple questions after her intricate and precise commentary, and I find his responses inadequate, maybe even disinterested.

However, the book enacts its own restlessness, and I found myself, at parts, impatient, yes restless, with the (lack of) plot. So I find the novel (if one can call it that) successful, but would rather show more Derrick be a fullness of his own, rather than a response-and-reply. show less

This is the kind of book that will undoubtedly stay with me for a long time. The narrator has hired an assassin to kill her. The story takes place over the last few hours of her life which she spends talking to her assassn. The wrting is both lyrical and profound. "Is death a happy ending?"