AN ACCIDENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 3, 1996

The joys of travel and and the pleasures of the flesh (especially eating) define a woman's life and a philosophy of excess. The anti-Walden. Harrison (The Astonishing World, 1992, etc.), a long-time travel writer, starts her ninth book off poignantly: At age 60 she can barely breathe as a result of, among other things, a virus picked up on a trip to India. Alas, by the last chapter it is the reader who's gasping. Overwritten and random in form and content, this book is essentially a melding of essays penned over a six year period--some are indeed autobiographical while others pay tribute to her intellectual or materialistic heroes--that portray the author as a deprived child who grew up to drown her sorrows in indulgence. The foods she loves, the locales she adores, even the furnishings in her rooms, are described in such hedonistic and privileged terms that little sympathy can be felt for her terrible childhood as the daughter of a disturbed mother and a possibly homicidal father. There is quite an inventory of possessions, and a bit of name-dropping as well: ""A Courtier of the Nizam of Hyderabad gave me a string of carved, unpolished Mogul emeralds,"" she boasts. Not that there aren't some anecdotal pearls: In Bali, a monkey runs off with her Xanax, and later she discovers who owns Napoleon's much-traveled penis. The French emperor aside, Harrison writes much about the men in her life, but, with the exception of a beautiful six-page reverie of her relationship with a black jazz musician, her lovers are as lifeless as her collectibles. The former husband is referred to simply and always as Mr. Harrison. Putting him at a safe distance from her heart may protect her peace of mind, but it does little to deepen her memoir. With no discernable lessons to be learned from this fragmentary record of a very full life, the reader might as well go shopping.

Pub Date: June 3, 1996

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 396

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996

Categories: NONFICTION