‘Before’ is a moment of truth, when young women, poised on the edge of a new consciousness, were struggling towards the vocabulary to express it. ‘After’ is a time of the rewards of feminism and the 80’s for women immersed in the joy and pain of love, jobs, and babies. But they must also face the limitations of their lives, those imposed from the outside, and now, those which come from within.In Paris on the day her mother dies, June meets a philosophy student who shares her passion for Broadway musicals. During a summer job in Calgary, Tomi is drawn into a friendship with a draft dodger, a friendship she mistakes for love. Finally, as Althea and Ken flee with their three children from brush fires in Corsica, Althea wonders how the private dramas of her middle years will mark her children’s lives. Govier’s women take up their power uneasily, moving from isolation to a hard-won solidarity, from singlehood to marriage and motherhood. In this splendid collection, her first since Fables of Brunswick Avenue, Katherine Govier perfectly illuminates the tiny battles for supremacy which make up the fabric of the lives of her generation.