20 - Wednesday, February 5, 1992 - North Shore News

Celibate tale
cf couple hits
close to home

A Celibate Season, By Carol
Shields and Bianche Howard,
Publ. by Coteau Books, 1991,
191 pp., $26.95 cloth,

$14.95 paperback

HEN RECESSION
hits, traditional
roles in marriage

break down fast.

In Review
LOOKS AT BOOKS

Both partners try to maintain
their careers; who knows when
one may have to support the
other? Or when a husband must
stay at home so that his wife can
take up a promotion further afield?

This pattern is familiar to many
Canadians in today’s economic
climate, which is why a new book,
A Celibate Season, raises many
pertinent issues for readers.

In the novel, co-authored by
North Vancouver resident Blanche
Howard with Carel Shields, a
would-be upwardly-mobile couple
on the North Shore faces the
strains of such a situation.

Charles, a currently unemployed
architect, agrees to become a
stay-at-home dad when his lawyer
wife, Jocelyn, is offered work with
a government commission on
Poverty in Ottawa. Out of necessi-
ty, as well as choice, she moves
east to become the family bread-
winner,

To ease their separation — their

“celibate season’’ — they agree
to communicate by mail, signing
their letters as Jock and Chas. (t
didn’t think her androgynous
name necessary — was it to make
their role reversals even more
confusing?)

In time, she finds her feet in
government circles, while back
home in suburban North Van-
couver Chas copes with poverty,
puberty and poetry. ;

Will Jock’s feminist successes
tempt her to stay in Ottawa? Will
he want to explore newly-
discovered talents at Capilano Col-

lege even further (literary and
otherwise)? Will their marriage
survive the hazards of contem-
porary solutions?

While their story is told ina
skilful and sympathetic way, it is
sad that the epistolary format of A
Celibate Season does not allow us
greater knowledge of the per-
sonalities and problems of each
protagonist.

| found the a‘nount of dialogue
written into many letters hard to
accept — I’ve never been so lucky
with my correspondents! Some-
times their exchanges read like a
theatre script.

As each author personifies a
particular partner, one is kept on
the hop guessing which novelist

44 Charles agrees to
become a stay-at-home
dad when his lawyer
wife, Jocelyn, is
offered work with a
government
commission on

poverty in Ottawa.99 |

writes for the huskand, and which
for the wife. The wider implica-
tions of the book's topical theme
also give rise to much thought and
debate.

Multi-talented Blanche Howard
has lived in North Vancouver
since 1973, graduated in science
and technology, married, and
moved to Ottawa when her hus-
band was elected'an MP in 1968
while remaining politically active
herself. Her first novel, The
Manipulator, won the Canadian
Booksellers Award in 1973.

Her colleague Carol Shields — a
former Vancouverite — has writ-
ten 17 previous books, winning
the prestigious Marion Engel

See Stage page 2%

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CO-AUTHORS OF A Celibate Season Carol Shields (lett) and NV resident Slanche Howard.

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