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Fergal Keane closely considers the roles and characters of President Mandela, Mr de Klerk and Chief Buthelezi, basing his comments on regular meetings with all three. He is, however, mainly interested in `the ordinary people who were pushed forward by the heave of history'. Not for him the too-commmn journalistic ploy of lurking in luxury hotels gleaning second- hand material from local media folk and gossiping politicians. He spent much time in various townships, not only during con- flicts but as part of his quest to probe behind the leaders' rhetoric into the daily reality of the lives of the dispossessed, the majority of South Africans whose desper- ate courage and phoenix-like hope had gradually and very painfully conquered apartheid.
The Bondage of Fear gains its distinctive flavour from the quality of the author's involvement with South Africa, revealed when he recalls the death of his close friend John Harrison:
Like myself, John felt an intimate attachment to the South African story. It went beyond the ordinary interest of a journalist to the degree that the country's transition to democracy became a personal passion.
The deep grief occasioned by John Harri- son's death (in a car accident, during the bizarre chaos of Bophuthatswana's col- lapse) overshadows this book and prompts a self-questioning that gives it an autobio- graphical layer — not obtrusive, but both moving and thought-provoking in the honesty of its confusion. Yet The Bondage of Fear ends joyously, with an exultant description of the miracu- lously peaceful elections and President Mandela's inauguration — marking the tri- umph of hope over fear. Fergal Keane, however, is too perceptive and knowledge- able for euphoria (justified though it was in May 1994) to colour his conclusions. Although cautiously optimistic about the immediate future — the next decade or so — he defines with chilling precision the dangers ahead. Since he finished this book certain developments (or the lack of them) must have sharpened his apprehen- sion. That remarkable hybrid known as GNU — the Government of National Unity — would be well advised to heed his warnings.
Dema Murphy is working on a book about South Africa, to be published by John Murray. OPEN SECRETS by Alice Monro Chatto, £14.99, pp. 294 Reading Alice Munro one cannot escape the impression that she has a strange gift: that of unending narrative. In her stories no family member is without a provenance, no house without its exact position in a landscape. The effect is to turn everything she writes, however circum- scribed, into an unfinished novel. She has done this before, in the beautiful Lives of Girls and Women, in which each title or chapter heading signalled a departure, and each departure became a return, thus entrapping the willing reader in a dreamy circularity.
Much the same thing happens in Open Secrets. We are in a town in provincial Canada: it is sometimes called Carstairs and sometimes Walley. Its main industry appears to be a piano factory, referred to summarily as Douds, and various members of the Doud family — Arthur, Billy, Bea feature in one or other of the stories. Many of the characters return home after numer- ous adventures, and express surprise that it has all changed. But it has not changed; it is simply that they have gone away and come back. It is in fact they who have changed, but the changes have gone unnoticed.
`Adventures' is perhaps the wrong word. The transformations that the characters undergo are more often than not banal but unexpected. They get married, but not to the people we expect them to have mar- ried. Dorrie Beck, in 'A Real Life', spends No transformation could be stranger than that undergone by Charlotte, who once lost her way in Albania and was abducted and adopted by a tribe which named her Lottar and used her to guard the sheep. In later life Charlotte turns up at a bookshop owned by the narrator, accompanied by a silent and obviously for- eign husband. This husband is without employment but tries to sell secondhand books purloined from an unknown source. Charlotte is very high spirited, a woman obviously at home in her chosen context. Visited in hospital at the end of her life, she tells a strange story, of how once in Albania she went adrift when on a guided tour, was lost for years, and only made it back to the English-speaking world through the kindness of a Franciscan priest, now doing rather badly in the secondhand book trade.
Even more spirited is Gail, who loses her husband to Sandy, half his age. Gail dyes her hair, buys a plane ticket, and flies off to Brisbane, where the couple has settled. She locates the house, which appears to be abandoned, retrieves a letter from the mailbox, writes back to the sender in her husband's name, and eventually tracks down, or is tracked down by the abscond- ing Will. Finally a note comes through the door of her rented flat: 'Gail. I know it's you'. Whereupon she buys another plane ticket, and flies back home, having picked up a souvenir at the airport. This she intends to send him. And in due course but outside the limits of this story — he will inevitably track her down again.
So detailed and yet so matter of fact are these stories that at times they become meta-stories. Some women may behave like Gail but most writers do, absent-mindedly yet purposefully going wherever their narrative takes them. All are unreliable narrators. By the same token, these charac- ters, Gail, Louise in 'Carried Away', Dorrie, and Maureen, seem guided by a fate which they do not question. They have no fear of the future, accept the changes of direction to which they unhesitatingly sub- mit, and only occasionally attempt to redress past injustices. Alice Munro is so intent on following her characters, in whom she appears to have the utmost confidence, that her stories, so neat, so clear, seem
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