Behind a primal scream

Press, 9 May 1987, Page 23

Behind a primal scream

Fly Away Home by Margo Piercy. Pan, 1986. 463 pp. $16.50 (paperback). (Reviewed by Sharon Hunter)

There are certain times during my life when I feel that I would like to investigate primal'scream therapy a little further. Finishing reading Marge Piercy’s novel "Fly Away Home” serves to emphasise this urge. ’ ■

Piercy has written many books. She has had eight voltimes of poetry and seven novels published. Of these, other than. “Fly Away Home” I have read only “Braided Lives.” “Braided Lives” didTiot conjure up visions of Edward Munch’s famous painting in the same? way... . , . " ' I reiterate the cathartic relief of ■' screaming because “Fly Away Home” / is one of the most frustrating novels that I have ever read.

Piercy’s novel tells of one Daria Walker whose husband’s behaviour becomes progressively stranger until suddenly he announces that he is leaving her. Daria investigates her husband further, and discovers that his

business deals include arson — and murder. On the way to unravelling her husband’s evil doings Daria happily rediscovers herself as' a woman and becomes a born-again feminist Which is all very nice for Daria, but rather hard on the reader. Daria Walker is the only developed character in the novel and, as such, is frustratingly naive and gullible. Like a

good little lamb, she happily hands ail of her earnings as a reputable cook book writer and cordon bleu media star over to her husband without question — which is rather unrealistic in the mid-1980s. Perhaps more realistically for some Older women she rushes to make his favourite dessert when he returns after an absence, and hastens to comply when he decides to share her bed. While Daria arouses instincts of disbelief in the reader, Piercy’s other characters simply are not there, and the males - especially are poorly portrayed, .... s-u fc. Daria’s husband, Ross, remains a sort of cardboard cut-out with a pullstring which continually says to Daria, "I had to get out, you were strangling me,” ad nauseum. Similarly, new woman Daria’s boyfriend Tom, a carpenter who keeps a measuring tape handy just in case someone needs a new kitchen, is equally one dimensional and underdeveloped.

The final one hundred pages, in which I think Daria discovers “why Ross did it” are ramshackle and aggravating. - It is all very well to attempt to make feminism accessible in the form of a page-turner, but it would have been a little better if Piercy had progressed beyond 1978 and Marilyn French.