WOMAN AT THE EDGE OF TWO WORLDS

Given the title, as well as the neo-Castanedan spiritual odyssey that the author has undertaken in the past (Shakkai, 1992; The Woman of Wyrrd, 1990; etc.), Andrews's newest journey is ironically physical, even clinical, seeming to contradict her own thesis that a spiritual awakening compensates for the physical losses occasioned by menopause. In spite of her ritual dancing and eating, Andrews, we learn, suffers severe menopausal symptoms: sweating, crying, swelling, and physiological changes that she describes in amazing detail (bone loss; ``thinning of the vagina'')—with these details supplemented as she tells more than most readers need or will want to know about a gynecological examination by the ubiquitous heartless brute who so often shows up as a physician in feminist literature. Figures from previous books—the indefatigable Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs—appear, along with gourds, costumes, talking sticks, ``personal smudge bowls,'' a finicky diet, and personable wolves and uncanny bears who materialize for ritual dances. But instead of Andrews's usual dream flights to alien cultures or visits to other times, here she flies by scheduled airline, gets caught in traffic jams, mourns the death of her mother, and, while swimming with her boyfriend in Nevada, deals with the embarrassment of her wayward estrogen patch floating to the surface. She discusses menopause and women's life cycles with her apprentices, and confesses to having been raised in a dysfunctional family and abused as a child, and to being afflicted with denial. Boring, humorless, and unimaginative. Anyone interested in menopause should turn instead to Gail Sheehy's The Silent Passage or Germaine Greer's The Change. (Illustrations)