Salad Days

Esther Fisher is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and
a former food critic for The Globe & Mail.

These are tales of women’s experiences—or, more specifically, of
their discoveries about aspects of themselves. Frequently, these
“epiphanies” involve awareness of priorities and coming to terms
with the need for making choices.

The first story, though seen through the eyes of a four-year-old boy
who is miserable about his mother’s affair, is really the mother’s
story. She has been willing, for whatever reasons, to continue a
relationship with a man who brutalizes her, but when she realizes that
he frightens her son, she chooses the child over the man. And in “This
Really Isn’t It,” a young Canadian woman living in Paris is in love
with foreignness—the city, her Tunisian Jewish lover, and the
“otherness” of her ambience. But at one particular meal, shared with
her lover’s parents, all the glamour fades; the food is unpleasant,
the customs strange, the conversation dull, and the mother’s habit of
deferring to the men unattractive. In a flash, the protagonist wakes up
and decides to go home to Canada, to family and the familiar. Another
story deals with an adolescent’s “crush” on an older woman, which
is suddenly shattered by the discovery of the women’s lesbian
relationship.

Most of the stories are realistic, but “Wing Beat,” a delightful
blend of fantasy and realism, offers a glimpse of the author’s range
of talent. In it, a woman whose family has grown up and left home begins
to sprout actual wings. Her wings, a metaphor for freedom, are her means
of escape from a life that has until now been sheltered and enclosed;
she flies out the window to join the birds in the woods. Alternatively,
her wings may be those of an angel, connoting her release through death
from a mundane, boring existence.

More down-to-earth are several of the tales that deal with Jewish
tradition and family life. The most successful of these is “Beyond the
Pale,” a first-person narration of a young girl’s developing
awareness of and affection for her old-country, old-fashioned
grandfather. When she is 11, she tolerates him, knowing that her parents
are often embarrassed by the old man; later when he comments on her
budding maturity, she dislikes him. But with time, she realizes his love
for and devotion to his family. After his death, when she is at college,
she cherishes his memory.

There is a good deal of sameness about many of the themes, which limits
the range of these stories. But of their kind, they are nicely crafted,
written with sensitivity and wit, and would especially appeal to women.