Changes

Beautifully and evocatively written in prose that's by turns gentle and harsh, personal and impersonal, ''The Carhullan Army'' is a book about women much more than it is a book about future catastrophe. Gender Sex and gender is its focus - future catastrophe's effect upon it is really just a political and philosophical vehicle for an examination of womanhood. Who and what are we as women? Sex seems importantto self-realisation. What Sister takes from sex and her attitude towards it change and develop as she herself changes and develops. Youthful enjoyment in the first flush of love gives way to dislocation and lack of libido in the controlled, post apocalyptic world of The Authority. Lesbian sex seems fulfilling and holistic and joyful in the back to nature commune of Carhullan. And when Sister goes back to lovemaking with men as she trains for war, sex becomes little more than an angry and brutal need. Here are three faces of woman as basic as you get.

I am not sure what Hall intends me to take from ''The Carhullan Army''. Should I be mourning the fact that whatever we do as women, we are doomed to fail? Surely not. Should I be celebrating the fact that whatever happens to us on the outside, we can always choose what we are on our womanhood the inside? Perhaps. Should I be taking to the streets? Looking for sisterhood? I don't know. What I do is that I'm thinking not only about all these things but also about thick, harsh and heady prose that perfectly expresses the landscape of the narrative - physical, emotional and political - and about a writer unafraid to write a big story in few words. And all these thoughts are good thoughts.