Visa For Avalon

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful but not thought provoking
Review: A woman is informed by the government that her property will
be expropriated in order to build a factory, presumably a
privately owned facility. This causes her and her friends to
decide to leave the country.

It reminded me of how in the United States today, there are
plenty of examples of the government forcing land owners to
sell to build state sanctioned shopping malls and the like.

While, I find such use of government power dismaying, using
such an event to paint the society as totalitarian seems over
the top. The author could have found better clues (introduced
later in the story) for her characters that the society they
live in had become totalitarian.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: I was interested in this book in part because I'd heard of Bryher in connection with the poet H.D., and in part because it was recommended by the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi, who, I figured, gets a lot out of her reading. She's definitely right about Visa for Avalon. It's half suspense/half political allegory, about several friends who belatedly realize that their (unnamed) country has been taken over by a totalitarian movement while they were involved in their own lives. They decide to leave for another country called Avalon, which they don't know much about, and set about to get visas and to get out before the borders shut down. It is beautifully written -- lyrical, observant, and concise. It reminds me a bit of Coetzee.
The novel apparently draws on Bryher's experience in helping Jews escape the Nazis -- she lived in Switzerland in the early part of the war and helped many people escape Germany. And the book clearly resonates in the politics of the world today.

Rating:
Summary: Slim, subtle, and sly -- and well worth the buy
Review: VISA FOR AVALON is a slim book - Audrey Hepburn slim, with all that implies. The plot is seemingly simple (and filmic). Basically, within the space of a week and for different reasons, seven people decide to try to leave their country (a close copy of England), the only home most of them have ever known, before it is too late to do so, and go to a place that's little more than a rumor. ("'Avalon? ... It's very unfashionable these days.'") The sweet, confused, comic, desperate, disparate world that Bryher conjures in her novella is a pre-dystopia. Her story depicts what things might have been like - might be like - at the edge, just before.... Before the books start getting burned, before soma is ingested, before history gets revisioned, before reading becomes a criminal act.... Just before escape is impossible, just before Mordred claims victory. Faintly futuristic with Arthurian teases and political squints, VISA FOR AVALON is also subliminally Delphic, recalling that oracle's confounding challenge: know thyself.