No Fixed Address

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The dust jacket presents a vista of an empty, endless road, going nowhere. That, in brief, describes the life of Arachne Manteia, heroine of No Fixed Address. She is untamed, indeed semi-civilized; unpredictable and willful, obsessed with personal freedom and untrammeled, uncommitted sexual activity with a series of chance-met strangers in a manner more of the reckless 1960s than of the cautious 1980s.

Paradoxically, this working-class ex-bus driver longs to achieve a place in the safe, neat, respectable world of the most constant of her many lovers. Her odd occupation offers her the adventurous opportunities once the prerogative of the legendary travelling salesman. Arachne is a panty sales rep who distains to wear the product she sells. This amorous voyager is an oddly sympathetic character, in spite of her less-than-attractive habits.

The story, tautly plotted in its earlier chapters, has a tendency to sag as Arachne, embroiled with the law over a complicated kidnapping charge, loses her none-too-secure grip on her life and circumstances. This is an interesting novel, but not the author’s best work.