THE LOTUS EATERS

by Gerald Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Only a bitter detestation for the shams that pose as realities in the standards and activities of ""the Beach"" (presumably Miami Beach) could justify this story of Tom Sorrento's archaeological team and what happens to them when thrust into this bogus world. Through flashbacks the reader fills in the backgrounds of the group:- Tom, hero to his Italian family and friends of New York's Bronx- but an enigma when he becomes an anthropologist; Marty, his wife, and her eccentric genius of a father, a famous anthropologist, Prof. Maitland, who cannot resist championing lost causes; Ballard, a Negro whose scientific background is at odds with the pull back to the war his people are waging; an ex-Communist, haunted by his personal tragedy. Set against them are the millionaire couple who have granted the right to ""the dig""- and who show a shallow concern for the findings- a possible lost site of a lost tribe of Glade Indians. And Ira deKay, an utterly surrealist character, whose one aim becomes the acquisition of Tom's remote, beautiful, arrogant wife. Marty softens under the experience of luxury and succumbs in one of the most tawdry affaires the printed page has offered. The satire runs thin in an overlong, confused, unpalatable book-and Ira's violent and stirs nothing in the reader's- or for that matter anyone else's- mind. Frankly, this reader disliked The Lotus Eaters as much as she liked The Last Angry Man.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: FICTION