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Winner of the Writers' Guild of Alberta Award for Fiction

Nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction

Arachne Manteia is a road rider, a traveling sales rep who drives a classic Mercedes and peddles women's underwear for a living. From her working class childhood to her comfortable adult life, Arachne refuses the conventional and embraces whatever adventure fate throws in her path.

A rogue sales rep with a man in every town, she lures each into her web of desire. All of them she claims as part of her never-ending journey, which promises fulfillment but offers no map for her longing. Always ready to fight and flee, Arachne Manteia is the quintessential picara, skillfully reckless, frighteningly irresistible, ready to go to the edge of the mappable world and beyond.

Customer Reviews (1)

"Threads to and from the web" in Aritha van Herk's 'No Fixed
This is a book report from graduate students in the Netherlands (College for Adult Education in Zierikzee) on Aritha van Herks NO FIXED ADDRESS: AN AMOROUS JOURNEY (1986) We made use of the Seal paperback,printed by McClelland & Stewart Limited, Toronto in 1987 (pagereferences NFA-1) and the reprint by Red Deer College Press, Red Deer,Alberta in 1998 (page references NFA-2)

NO FIXED ADDRESS is the fourthbook by Aritha van Herk that we have analyzed in class. Like her previousnovels JUDITH (1978) and THE TENT PEG (1981), and her fictionalautobiography PLACES FAR FROM ELLESMERE, A GEOGRAFICTIONE; EXPLORATIONS ONSITE (1990) , NO FIXED ADDRESS (NFA) deals with a woman on the move, challenging boundaries of male dominated space and place. All four booksare situated in the west and north of Canada with a travelling saleswomanasthe protagonist of this book roaming west and north in a blackMercedes. A female infiltration and inscription has begun. Aritha vanHerks work is particularly interesting to us after hersuccessful performance with her musical assistant Brian Stanko in Zierikzeein November 1996. Born in Canada, van Herk has close ties with herparents native country Holland, from which her family emigrated after World War II. Van Herk reads and understands Dutch well andafter a few days in Holland speaks it fluently. The richness of her rootsis visible in all her work. In NO FIXED ADDRESS it ranges from obviousreferences to the snot rag red handkerchief (NFA-1:41);(NFA-2 : 30) Dutch wooden shoes (NFA-1:145); (NFA-2 : 117) and Dutchcafe (NFA-1: 191); (NFA-2 : 155) to underlying structures of narrativeexamples of the Dutch-Calvinist bible with its sumptuousarray oftraditional stories. Like mythology, which van Herk draws freely from,these stories try to explain the world and shed light on socialinteractions. In NO FIXED ADDRESS we meet Arachne Manteia, only daughter ofteacup reader Lanie and (unskilled labourer) Toto.Unwanted by her mother,Arachne from an early age is often left alone and later spurns thesocialization of motherhood. No dolls for her but sets of clothespinsrepresenting two armies, attacking and decimating each other; a game sheplayed with her father,. (NFA-1: 39; NFA-2: 27). Arachne is rebellious inher youth andleads theBlack Widows gang.Like biblical David sheconquers the strong Goliathan attackers. (NFA-1: 193; NFA-2: 156).Leavingschool early, she becomes a busdriver in Vancouver, meets cartographerThomas, who left his precious maps in her bus. Maps are important forArachne; like words they resemble an extra-textual reality, whetherlandscapes or objects, which are both constructions.Arachne goes beyondmaps and words.Arachne drives Thomas to his hometown Calgary in herblack 1959 Mercedes. She inherited this carfrom Gabriel, one of hermothers teacup reading clients.Like the biblical archangel Gabriel proclaimed the annunciation of her name:Arachnid, the Greek equivalent of spider.Spiders are rogues. They eat each other when theresnothing else to catch. (NFA-1: 83; NFA-2: 65).Arachne, atravelling saleswoman of womens underwear, catches men, evenkills one and leaves a thread before and after spiralling her weblikeCanadian roads and trails.Mythical Arachne in OvidsMETAMORPHOSES defies the gods and wins the weaving contest for which she ispunished not by death but by being suspended in the air with a noose roundher neck. In her pregnancy Lanie watches an injured and also pregnantspider, anchoring its first thread diagonally across thewindow (NFA-1: 82; NFA-2: 64) weaving her silken web. TheEnglish Virago edition has taken this seven-legged spider on the back coverof the book.Arachne is injured too, affected by her youth, and ruthlesslypushes ahead her dissent from fixed addresses. Womens paths arenot linear or straight but rather circular and diagonal.Arachnes story is embedded in a documentary foreword andafterword, where the researcher questions the historical entrapment of thefemale body by uncomfortable clothing, particularly underwear. Theresearcher records the story of the vanishing Arachne Notebookon a missing person who has left a trail of panties in the farnorth where all the roads have stopped. (NFA-1: 319); (NFA-2 :260) andwhere a helicopter pilot saw her last driving her black Mercedes. The fewinhabitants of this sparsely populated region witness the blue tail of acomet, emblemmatic of Arachnes disappearance into space. On thelevel of the story Arachne disappears with a helicopter pilot watchingthe roadless world below her, knowing she hasarrived (NFA-1:310) after witnessing Thomasinitials (NFA-2 : 253) buried in the moss. The surreal end implies theimpossibility of closure - no death for Arachne but suspension in airwhether it is a Christian heaven or the mythological realm of the gods. Themessage of researcher and Arachne is clear: the thread of female identitycontinues to be woven, maps of female inscription remain to be written,roads of female subversion have to be driven.As intriguing asArachnes relationship with Thomas (the middle-class homemakerpatiently waiting on/for her), is her relationship with Joseph, an elderlySerbian immigrant, who like his biblical namesake, wants toown graves. They both cherish a skull in agraveyard acknowledging the buried history of Canadas nativepopulation. (NFA-1: 18-25; NFA-2 : 9 - 16)Thanatos and Eros, death andsex, are closely linked in this immensely rich novel which by means ofbiblical and mythical symbols lays bare the intricacies of representationof womens experience. ... Read more

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In The Tent Peg, award-winning novelist Aritha van Herk uses her unerring perception and impressive literary skill to capture the mystical mood of the Arctic and the people who are drawn to it.

In this intriguing story, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to work in a uranium prospecting camp deep in the Yukon mountains. J.L. is on the run from an empty heart and is desperate for solitude. Yet solitude eludes her from the moment she hangs up her pots and pans in the cook tent, and the men in the camp begin to drift toward her, drawn by her silence. These men are drifters, romantics and outcasts - men who have come to the North in search of answers for questions they can't define.

Customer Reviews (3)

Adore, adore, adore
I so love this book.
The way she captures different characters speaking, the way she describes the wilderness with just enough, but not too much.
The way JL is weak and empowered. I so wish I could read more about JL.
I highly recommend this book to every woman on the planet.
I love it. I've read it every year for the past 14 years.

A BEAUTIFUL NOVEL
This spare novel of a young woman who infiltrates an all-male geologists' camp in northern Canada uses the technique of rotating narrators pioneered by Faulkner in As I Lay Dying to achieve a wonderfully multi-dimensional evocation of the main character. Though certain of the peripheral characters, notably Jerome and Milton, never break free of caricature, the novel is made profound, and rereadable, by the strength, honesty and uniqueness of J.L. I completely fell in love with her. You will too.

Absolutely Nails the Bush Camp Atmosphere
The book is about a camp cook in a Geology camp in the NorthwestTerritories of Canada.I worked in the Bush in Canada for eleven years andeveryone I know who has lived in those camps finds this book extremelyevocative of the camp experience. I read this book cover to cover in onesitting. I don't think you need to have lived that life to enjoy the story,however. It's an excellent piece of writing. ... Read more

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In 1978, a young Canadian writer named Aritha van Herk captured international attention by winning the first Seal Books (Canada) First Novel Award for her story about a pig farmer called Judith. She was twenty-four years old then and she has been writing steadily ever since. This book presents five essays on her work. ... Read more

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Alberta Re-defined
'Mavericks:An Incorrigible History of Alberta' depicts the evolution of a stabilized culture and civil society in the province called Alberta.The author attempts to dissolve the delineations of genres as she presents facts in a way that is inimitable.The approach to the history of the province enhances the amount of interest that the reader has.All the fourteen sections are worth regarding as regards the enlisting of ideas and the style of presentation.The narrative provides the formation of the landmass right from the primordial time and deals with the slow infiltration of fur traders into the province.It is the saga of the troubles and tribulations of the First Nations people who are the true inheritors of the province.The last section which gives the details of some of the characteristics of Albertais quite interesting. ... Read more

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Desperate to find a home, a restless, wandering woman determines that the only way she can appease her terrible homesickness is to occupy the still center of death. Unable to commit suicide, she hires a professional killer and contracts him to murder her, by her choice and on her terms.

Restlessness chronicles their meeting and its unexpected story and outcome. In an effort to dissuade the woman from death, her killer elicits from her stories about her travels.

In this reversal of Sheherazade, who saves her life through a continuous story, Restlessness becomes a story about how to avoid story, a travel book about how to evade travel, a manual for how to stay put. Breathtaking in the tension of its incipient murder, this novel will not permit the reader to break the thread of watching and waiting that both death and travel conjure.

Customer Reviews (1)

one of the best books i've read about suicide
ths book does not villify suicide, it just presents it -- cleanly, plainly, and painfully.

beautifully written. ... Read more

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This book acknowledges that no form of writing can stay categorically separate from another. Both writing and reading, reader or writer friction each other, desire the contamination of words. As fiction writer and critic, Aritha van Herk explores other texts, other bodies, other moments arising from the otheredness of the writer in the uneasy position of critic. More than elucidations, these writings become journeys through language and imagination, weaving together the realms of fiction, autobiography, poetry and criticism. ... Read more

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Internationally acclaimed novelist Aritha van Herk takes geography and fiction and creates of them a geografictioneóa fiction mapped on the lines of geography, a geography following the course of fiction. A new reading of Tolstoy's tragic heroine Anna Karenina and a sojourn at Ellesmere Island come together, and the North becomes an incomparably beautiful place, a living, unread, feminine landscape.

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Hazard Lepage, the last of the studhorse men, sets out to breed his rare blue stallion, Poseidon. A lusty trickster and a wayward knight, Hazard’s outrageous adventures are narrated by Demeter Proudfoot, his secret rival, who writes this story while sitting naked in an empty bathtub.In his quest to save his stallion’s bloodline from extinction, Hazard leaves a trail of anarchy and confusion. Everything he touches erupts into chaos necessitating frequent convalescences in the arms of a few good women–excepting those of Martha, his long-suffering intended.Told with the ribald zeal of a Prairie beer parlor tall tale and the mythic magnitude of a Greek odyssey, The Studhorse Man is Robert Kroetsch’s celebration of unbridled character set against the backdrop of a rough-and-ready Alberta emerging after the war. Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. ... Read more

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Always original, at times wickedly funny
When Hazard Lepage sets out to breed his rare blue stallion Poseidon in the hope of saving his horse's bloodline from extinction, he creates a trail of anarchy, confusion, and chaos -- as well as encountering the charms of a fewgood women. The narrator of Hazard's idiosyncratic adventures in pursuit of his obsession is a maniacal, naked writer who works in his bathtub. Always original, at times wickedly funny, and told with unrestrained enthusiasm framed by a post-war, rough-edged Alberta, The Studhorse Man showcases and documents Robert Kroetsch as one of Canada's best living writers at work today. Also part of the University of Alberta Press "Canadian Literature Series" and very highly recommended reading are Robert Kroetsch's earlier works: What The Crow Said (0888643039, $14.95); The Words Of My Roaring (0888643490, $16.95); Completed Field Notes (088864-3500, $19.95: and The Hornbooks Of Rita K. (0888643721, $16.95).

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About This Book
"The thirty-six superlative and evocative stories in Boundless Alberta announce to the global literary community that our province is as rich in cultural diversity as it is in writers with the gift to express it.

Boundless Alberta is a book of boundless pleasure and entertainment, a collection of wonderful stories for winter nights, summer beaches, trains, planes, ourselves, our friends, and relatives, whether in Calgary, Edmonton, or New Delhi -- for anyone who enjoys a good story well told."

Paperback, 551 pp. ... Read more

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Carmen and Griffin, young and white, are head-over-heels in love.When Carmen turns into a black woman, Griffin thrills at a love turned exotic.But Carmen's transformation means trouble for Griffin's racist mother, already struggling with a new lover and a husband nicknamed God.The question is, can love be relied upon to save the day?This is a funny, sexy tale of love affairs and magical transformations. ... Read more

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Word count: 936. ... Read more

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Beautiful, prosperous, and unpredictable, Alberta has always been the maverick province. Indeed, Albertans pride themselves on their difference. This book tells the story of how this fascinating part of Canada has come to possess the character it does. Through the stories of a host of individuals who together shaped southern Alberta’s unruly history, Audacious and Adamant traces the profile of a place both beautiful and contrary.

This is the story of the immigrants and politicians who weathered dust storms and national policies to forge Alberta’s unusual temperament. This is the story of the dancers and wrestlers and artists who depicted Alberta’s beauty and demonstrated Alberta’s prosperity. This is the story of the dreamers and ne`er-do-wells who refused to follow the rules. This is the story of winners and losers, mavericks whose determination helped to ferment the astonishing place that Alberta has become.

Determined to control their destiny, the characters profiled within these pages rolled up their sleeves and went to work. Through boom and bust, through rain and dust, they persevered, leaving their indelible mark on this part of Canada.

Against the backdrop of a stunning landscape, the sheer audacity of these province-builders demonstrates the stubbornness and foresight of those who poured their energy into making this place as unusual and awe-inspiring as its scenery.

Alberta’s inheritance is unorthodox. Her citizens defy definition. In a history unlike any place on earth, Audacious and Adamant recounts the tales of Albertans who made a difference, whether they were lovers or liars, saints or sinners. Their heads in the clouds and their feet in the mud, these characters together forged a fascinating history.

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Judith was born on a farm.Proud, fiercely independent, she went to the city to make something of herself.But things went wrong.And so, alone and defiant, she returned to her roots.Singlehandedly, stubbornly, she worked.She found a new lover who could stir her passion in a way she had never dreamed possible.Now, it was beginning to happen.Joyfully, she was beginning to live again. ... Read more

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Intercity is a collection of short stories designed to be read on long journeys. This book is part of the Light Transports series, a set of three collections of short stories designed as pocket books for the commuter. The books are compiled with a series of stories that reflect differing lengths of journeys – A Couple of Stops, Commutes and Intercity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Back to the Land
In a nutshell, this book is about a woman who gives up city life and men in
order to take up pig farming. She is sick of the facades of city life and wants
to get back to the land.

Judith
This is a great book that looks at how a woman is lost in a society that only prides itself on economical gain. Judith is a character who is searching for her morality but is blinded by societies values without having an oportunity to see the negative aspects of it. While making decisions that could have serious effects on her future, she is unable to fully understand her choices and makes them without analysis her goals. This is a book that deals with a person's moral blindness and how they have to cope with making choices without fully comprehending their decision. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from American Review of Canadian Studies, published by Association for Canadian Studies in the United States on December 22, 2003. The length of the article is 4342 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Leading the parade.
Author: Aritha van Herk
Publication: American Review of Canadian Studies (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 2003
Publisher: Association for Canadian Studies in the United States
Volume: 33Issue: 4Page: 487(10)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more