DON'T TELL ME YOUR NAME

by Hollis Hodges ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 1978

A gently sexy and wryly sentimental fable by the author of The Fabricator (1976), featuring a worthy successor to that first novel's charming hero. Placid, almost 40-ish Toomey Bougereau, ex-psychologist and ex-husband, has recently and mysteriously settled in Munsen, Mass., where he presides over a basket-making mini-factory staffed by nubile (but troubled) females and sturdy Mrs. Murphey, whose visiting granddaughter Myra is Toomey's favorite companion. Meanwhile, at some earlier point in time, in Coultraine, Mass., we meet auto mechanic Toni Heller, already an unwed mother, who decides she wants another child and will therefore get pregnant--by some obliging, nameless, random acquaintance whom she'll never have to see again. On the road, Toni picks up--who else?--Toomey, but their idyllic one-day tryst becomes problematic: they both fall in love, yet both are determined to remain unattached, not even revealing their real names. So they go their own ways, broken-hearted, and Toomey's only clue to Toni's identity is the name of a town: Munsen, Mass. That's why he has settled there, hoping for some traces of Toni. Thus, it's not really such a coincidence when it turns out that Toni is Mrs. Murphey's daughter, Myra's mother, and--though it's a close call, almost ships-that-pass-in-the-night--Toomey's happily-ever-after. This sort of contemporary fairy tale could so easily be precious, whimsical, or fey; in Hodges' warm, rather careworn hands, it isn't--it's one man's quietly adorable answer to the sexual revolution.

Pub Date: Oct. 9, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION