Bad enough hearing it in the pub!
'Thirtysomething": Channel Four, Tuesdays 10pm 'Balancing Acts - on Being a Mother', Edited by Katherine Gelve. Virago £5.99 Cecilia Tredget examines two very different treatments of similar themes. Set somewhere on the East Coast, Thirtysomething revolves around the lives, loves and families of a small group of friends who once went to college together. This group have now all 'grown up', shaken off any political commitments, and have immersed themselves in a comfortable lifestyle where stripped-pine and coffee percolators are the order of the day.
Hope and Michael have a daughter, Jancy: Hope is in publishing. Michael is a partner in an advertising firm with best friend Elliot Elliot and Nancy have two children and marriage ON THE GOLDEN PORCH By TATYANA TOLSTAYA Virago Review by Jean Reilly I should say straight away that I hate short stories. This collection has not changed my opinion. Described on the sleeve as 'poetic, magical and piereingly funny" this book by Tatyana Tolstaya, a relative of Leo Tolstoy. might he a bit of the first in style, maybe even a little of the second in content. but is absolutely none of the third in any respect whatsoever.
Many of the stories are written from the point of view of children of vanous ages, all of whom appcar to he sullering Irom a high temperature and feverishness. The author seems:
HE V -
Book instato Eat week the
programme concentrates on a different character and theme: the prospect of a childless relationship: the death of a close relative; coping alone with young children. Thirtysomething is often humorous, sometimes scntimental - but it rarely considers anything political outside their cosy little world.
Thirtysomething has bocome something of a cult. So what is person's soup" so popular?
The programme, unlike the majority of contemporary American soaps, attempts to explore the relationships between friends, parents and their children. This makes it somewhat unique, an few TV Programmes are prepared to give airtime to what are thought to he hum-drum, everyday
Friendships hetween women and between men are portrayed in a positive light, and what they say and mean to one another is taken seriously.
A favourite theme in the Hope has a baby of only about onc. I have often found that the image of motherhood presented is something that 1 can identify with. Again, this doesn't often happen in popular television and to have got a lot of her ideas. from when she had the measles as a child. Take the following extract from a story ahout a young boy who is obsessed with the mysterious 'louche" Tamila:
Well, when you eat lemons, save the pips for me, all right? If you collect one hundred thousand pips and make them into a necklace, you can lly even higher than the trees, did you know that? If you want, we can By logether, i show you a place where there's buried treasure - hut 1 forget the password to open it up. Mayhe we'll think of it together.
I realise that literature does not have to he rcalistic, hut you have to at least identify with the characters. Icannot, for the life of mie, identify with a child who would helieve for one second that load of old 'poetic and magical' nonsense.
The other main theme of the book is people looking back on part hushands, affairs and so on: regretting carlier decisions and
I have been surprised at how accurately this relationship has been depicted.
Thirtysomething hasn't exploded the myth of the serene and blissful mother, but it has come some way toward showing how we don't cope, how we feel controlled by this inecssantly screaming stranger, and how it can isolate and un-nerve the seemingly strongest and most capable Women.
Throughout the series the relationship between Hope and her daughter changes and develops, as it inevitably does; Hope returs to work and caves Jancy with a nanny. The job Hope does is demanding, she's. racked with guilt and her husband is not supportive since he's used to having her around when he gets back from work. So much for the "New Man" Michacl: but is it really any different in any other nuclear family?
Balancing Acts is a collection of thirteen essays on different aspects of motherhood. Each story emphasises a particular experience of being a mother: bringing up a disabled child, the fear or rearing a child in a racist socicty, being white adoptive parents to a black child, coping with a child that died at eleven weeks, or simply how to juggle fantasising on what might have been. This may be a perennia! theme of the short story (not to mention films. popular songs and magazine articles) but it is bad enough listening to that sort of thing in pubs without paying good moncy to read about it.
OPPOSE MUTARY GIDEON
Centre, 68, Shaftesbury Avenue, London WI your life to cope with the endless work that children seem to create.
The contributors examine their relationships with their partners and their children, and place them in the context of our socicty. Some essays are stronger than others and some arc too academic, but cach onc has something concrete to add to the picture of motherhood that the book creates.
Forme the most interesting thome that runs through the majority of essays is that of how we as feminists reconcile the woman and the mother in this socicty, All of us want to be "Super-Mum' and cope with everything just like we did before s/he arrived We don't want it to make any difference. However, the reality of the situation is that we arca't the same person, we are something more, and sadly, something less, struggling to keep our heads above water.
Balancing Acts is an invaluable book for women because it is only through sharing our experiences as women and mothers that we can itart to come to a betler understanding of our roic in society and how we can take action, both individually and collectively, to change it.
I am told that short stories are by their very nature partial and are meant to be evocative al feelings, emotinns and so on. All this collection evoked in me was irritation - but then, I hate short sfones. Support the Beijing students and workers! Chinese Solidarity Campaign,cle The Chinese Information
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Mississippi Burning Film with Gene Hackman and William Datoe Reviewed by Debbie Epstein Mississippi