I, ANNA

by Elsa Lewin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1985

In the opening chapter of this crude, derivative psycho-murder tale, Anna Welles, a 50-year-old New Yorker who's bitter about her recent divorce, meets a man named George at a singles' party, goes to his apartment, has disappointing sex with him; when George pressures her to engage in oral sex, she beats him to death. And then, after ecstatically chanting ""I hate you, Simon"" over the corpse (Simon's her ex-husband), Anna goes home and sort of represses her memory of the entire thing. Do you believe a word so far? Well, if so, you may also believe that Bernie Bernstein, the cop on the murder case, just happens to catch a glimpse of Anna and just happens to be madly attracted to her. (His own marriage, strained by the demands of a disturbed child, is breaking up--and he's voraciously hungry for sex.) So Bernie starts stalking Anna--part murder-suspect, part love-object--while the murder case develops some arbitrary, implausible red-herring complications: the dead man's druggie teenage son just happens to be sodomized and murdered (a totally gratuitous porno-scene) by a heroin-equipped seducer in a Kennedy Airport men's room. And, after Bernie and Anna come together in mutual comfort, her secret (which he's suspected all along) promptly emerges to ruin their beautiful togetherness--with death for Anna and tears for Bernie. First-novelist Lewin fills out this thin scenario with shallow streams-of-consciousness for both Anna and Bernie--and with assorted scenes in the New York/YA style of Norma Klein et al.: the sardonic complaints of various divorced women, angry about swinger ex-husbands and young second wives; mother/teenager dialogues. But all this humdrum domestica only highlights the lurid, unconvincing nature of Lewin's overheated plot--which has all the vulgarity of similar concoctions by Lawrence Sanders (and others) but none of the suspense, grit, or brio.

Pub Date: April 1, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Mysterious Press--dist. by Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION