VISA FOR AVALON
By
Most of Bryher's previous novels have been set in early historical times. This one leaps into the future; but, if it is science-fiction in a sense, it retains some of her mythic, timeless feeling. Robinson retires to a remote seashore village, where he has often vacationed. He loves the quiet countryside, hates the encroaching city-civilization. But almost immediately, the cottage of his landlady, Lilian Blunt, is marked for demolition; a new highway is going through. The two elderly people decide to emigrate to the island of Avalon. Meanwhile, a revolution is underway; the mindless, mechanized masses are about to organize a new government. Robinson, Lilian and four other individualists manage to escape to the airport, through howling mobs, and take off on the last plane to Avalon. The story is non-specific, stripped to its essentials, and therefore, perhaps, haunting as a folk or fairy-tale. It represents in modern dress an ageless dream of peace and escape to an island which has been a myth since King Arthur's time.