cover image Three Women K

Three Women K

Helke Sander. Serpent's Tail, $13.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-85242-171-7

In her first short-fiction collection,pk Sander, a German filmmaker, raises questions about the status of women's liberation in Europe and elsewhere, and about the roles that men and women feel forced to accept even today. The stories are narrated by three women, all named Ms. K, who spend a week together in an Alpine village hut and talk about the men who have messed up their lives. In ``Halloween in Berlin,'' one Ms. K tells of chasing a former lover to get him to return her soul. In ``Expedition with a UFO,'' another Ms. K recallspk a hiking trip with an old boyfriend whose machismo reaches absurd proportions, while her own ``mothering instinct''p. 56 finds expression. Sander's tales are ironic and amusing; however, one wonders about her moral sincerity after reading ``A Telephone Conversation with a Friend,'' in which a Ms. K, in response to a male friend's belittling of ``women's pet issues,''p. 120-121 parodies the ``intellectual taboo'' against comparing the Nazi extermination of the Jews with other crimes against humanity and asks ``whether the authorities' tacit agreement about the uniqueness of the crimes was not just one big hoax.'' (June)