Sheri Tepper: Be careful what you ask for

Mothers can not tell us who we are. Mirrors can not tell us who we are.
Only time can tell, for every moment we are choosing what to be. 
-Six Moon Dance


Sheri Tepper writes in a world of carnival mirrors. Familiar thoughts, beliefs, and meanings all twist away from your expectations as distortions of the familiar snag your eye, forcing you to re-examine what it means to be a grrl, and a human. Novels like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall express Sheri’s fascination with relationships between men and women, mothers and daughters, women and the world at large. Her characters are strong women who are not afraid to be honest with themselves, who fight for their beliefs and for the rights of others to have different beliefs. Her novels are occasionally disturbing, frequently thought provoking, and always fascinating stories of ethical conflict and growth.

Written in 1996 and set in the year 2000, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall reflects a world in which fundamentalist groups of all types have grown to encompass the globe, and women’s rights have almost disappeared. Seven women who attended college together in the 60’s formed a lifelong friendship and, swearing on an old copy of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, these women pledged to find their true selves, and to “never decline and fall from that place.” Although their paths diverge after college as they become a nun, a lawyer, a biochemist, an artist, a housewife, a doctor, an activist, they remain close friends, meeting each year to share stories and strength.

As the world falls faster towards total chaos, each woman must choose for herself where she will make her stand, and the reader is forced to choose along with them. The lawyer must choose whether she will defend a young girl who abandoned her baby, the nun must choose how far she can bend to the will of her church without falling from herself, the artist must face a world whose eyes are shut to art and life. When the author of the group dies, leaving behind her a legacy of activism wrapped in a web of mythic images, the novel plunges from the realistic to the fantastic. The biochemist discovers she has accidentally released a virus that will have a significant impact on the physical and emotional balance of the human race and the only possible solutions seem to be hidden in the allegory and symbolism of her dead friend’s stories. 

Without revealing too much, the novel ends with a choice. One woman unravels the clues left in the stories and is given a set of counter-viruses. Each one will change the human race, each one offers a different path. The character in the novel chooses, but her choice is left a mystery for the reader to solve. Sheri leaves the final outcome in your hands; each path has an opportunity for hope as well as a chance of failure, and only through communication and commitment will a path lead to success. 

Sheri Tepper builds her novels on ethical quicksand and provides the reader with a disturbing reflection of the hidden costs of paradise. Her books demonstrate the choices that lead into and away from the carnival mirrors and the possibilities they hold, but it is up to the reader to decide which path is right, which destination is the best. So what will you do with the information you’re given? What mirror will you choose?

 

Tracy Madison  grrl-e-grrl.com contributor