THE HEALING

by Gayl Jones

Beacon

336 pp., $23

The narrative voice of Harlan Egalton in Gayl Jones' most recent novel is bold from the book's start, seeping out of the first pages with a flavor as pungent and distinctive as the mustard sauce sardines she nibbles when we first meet her.

Like sardines in mustard sauce, Harlan's accent has a taste whose enjoyment requires some concerted cultivation. At first whiff, the quirks of her character are so sharp as to be repulsive. Her prattling naivete as subtly disturbing as a toddler playing with a loaded handgun, Harlan gabs about everything from slavery to the aesthetic of rock-star fashion with the same maddening equanimity, made worse by her mingling of each topic's catch-phrases with the provincialism of her exaggerated Southern accent.

As annoying as they are at first, though, these anomalies soon find explication as the narrative of Harlan's life unfolds, rendering them the endearing nuances of a magnificent woman rather than the peevish traits of a foolish stranger.

The growth of Harlan's personality to fit the huge shoes of her narrative voice is Jones's great accomplishment in The Healing. The stylistic design optimally supports the narrative's broad theme of constructing a personal identity in a world bent on its destruction. At one point, Jones encapsulates this quest for self by retelling the biography of Grandmother Jaboti, Harlan's ancestral precursor in the art of identity building. Jaboti began her life not as a human but as a turtle-woman in a traveling carnival freak show, kept on display between the bearded lady and the unicorn girl. She might have lived as a convinced turtle-woman forever, but for the day she met a man so handsome that she left her carnival in his pursuit, following him so far outside the striped walls of the freak-show tent that she became human.

Whenever Grandma Jaboti tells this story to Harlan, her mother tempers the narrative by explaining that Grandmother Jaboti wasn't really a turtle, but had simply been put in a fake turtle shell by evil carnival managers that had convinced Jaboti of her turtlehood when she was too young to know the truth. Despite her attempts to provide a rational explanation of Jaboti's surreal biography, though, Harlan's mother cannot help but be nervous about the influence of this story, worrying that such fantasy might render Harlan unable "to tell the truth from the truth."

When we meet the grown Harlan on the Greyhound bus handing out brochures for her faith-healing business and discussing water tanks with as much fervor as a pilgrim at a reliquary, her mother's concern about Harlan's grasp on "reality" begins to seem justified. Starting from the Spirit of Scandinavia Sardines, Harlan's train of thought takes off and plows through an existence where there is no boundary between the real and the unreal, the true and the untrue. From sardines she jumps to the slave-ships of the Middle Passage, to the fake Moroccan leather of the bag of the woman beside her to the mosquito on the cover of the woman's Scientific American.

Each leap of interest rendered with a minutiae of detail and consistency of expression that expose just how out of touch Harlan is with established notions of what is "true" and what is "important."

Unsettlingly random in its own right, the blue streak of experience and memory that runs across the pages of this book is made downright disturbing by Harlan's refusal to anchor its happenings in the framework of an established hierarchy of truth and reality. In The Healing, bearded ladies and unicorn girls are endowed with as much credence as the subjects of her husband's anthropological research and Paul Simon's lyrics are as respectable a system for understanding the world as the logic Harlan learns at night school.

Though Harlan's repudiation of our most cherished standards of reality ini- tially seems childishly reactionary, it is soonclear that her apparent inability to tell "truthfrom truth" is really a gift for discerning atruer truth as defined by her freely determinedindividual standards. At first, this rejection ofgenerally shared values seems an affront to thereader. Harlan's rejection of convention quicklybecomes understandable, though, as the narrativemakes clear that the common definitions of trueand untrue, right and wrong have only ever beenused to imprison her, conventions that define heras wrong and prevent her from constructing anidentity of her own so that she might be moreeasily be made to serve. For Harlan, theestablished definitions of truth and realitythreaten to deprive her of her humanity ascompletely as her Grandmother's humanity wasobliterated by the fake turtle shell.

As an attractive black woman from a workingclass background, Harlan enters a world in whichnearly everyone has a preconceived notion of whatshe should be. While Harlan scrambles to put inplace her own system of beliefs, she is roughlypassed through the world from hand to hand, eachfist attempting to squeeze her into a mold ofexpected identity. Her Grandmother and Mother wishher to be the good housewife, but lose her to thecorruptive North. Her husband wishes her to be hiscollaborator in digging up African roots but losesher to her native America. The wealthy Germanhorse breeder wishes her to be the dangerous spybut loses her to decency and self respect. Often,the people who wish to impose an identity upon heract out of their own necessity to protectthemselves from the imprisoning forces of theworld about them. The German horse breeder fightsprejudice and hatred with bodyguards and securitysystems, the rock star Harlan manages fights witha masquerade of words and costumes and her husbandfights by reviving his identity as an African.With no simple guard at her disposal, Harlan mustrely upon a more internal system of defense--herrefusal to accept society's basic tenets as herown. She cannot be imprisoned by shackles she doesnot believe in.

Harlan's middle name is Truth, after Sojourner,and like her namesake, she returns to the site ofher imprisonment after discovering her own routeto freedom. Harlan is a faith healer, freeingpeople from their ailments by instilling in themfaith in the unbelievable. Just as GrandmotherJaboti was imprisoned by belief in her turtleshell, a Ms. Lee's sinus infection is healed byher faith in clear passages. While new definitionsof truth and untruth based on the randomexperiences of one ordinary woman take somegetting used to, the freedom that Harlan attainssimply by looking at the details of existence in adifferent way is both extraordinary and effectivein its ability to shake the conviction of one'smost cherished beliefs.

Though Harlan's system of defense makes her aparticularly difficult character with whom torelate, a certain familiar tenacity keeps herengaging and believably human in spite of somerather gross exaggerations in personality. Thoughthe detail and prose style of The Healingalso verge on exaggeration, the flamboyancy andcontemporenaity of the work is amusing in the sameway a reading of Entertainment Magazinemight be. Though the presence of such figures asPaul Simon will certainly (and perhapsintentionally) attach an expiration date to thisnovel, Jones' knack for characterization and herstrong thematic motivation seem to promise anotherwork along the same lines, but with a greatersubtlety of design and characters whosimultaneously artfully forge their own identitiesand manage to operate more within the framework oftruths and values at the same time