FOUR DAYS

by Paddy Kitchen ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 1980

The notion of two virtual strangers playing house for a few intense clays of sex-and-getting-to-know-you isn't totally unpromising (remember Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow in the so-so John and Mary?)--but Kitchen uses that premise here as little more than an excuse to flash back over two not-very-interesting life stories. Jack is 48, Alison is 42, both are married; they meet at a teachers' conference, spend a night together, then decide to hole up in a seedy London hotel for four days before returning to their families. They talk, eat, drink at a pub, sing to each other, have lots of sex, dream of sharing a house in Jack's native Cornwall, and ask each other questions like ""Do you have favorite philosophers?"" But mostly they think over their domestic past and present. Country boy Jack first married a hometown lass (she was pregnant), later dumped her for a younger and trendier girl as his headmastering career prospered; and along the way he thoroughly lost his son--a surly, TV-fixated, sometime juvenile delinquent. Classy Alison has been long married to a cold, correct designer--who once joined her in ""lyrical, unfrenetic threesomes"" with her young French lover; and her son--a TV teen-star--has also grown away. Eventually, the lovers have a spat (Alison is momentarily angry when Jack sketches her in the nude for hours but draws ""Nothing but cunts""), and Jack learns that his wife knows about his infidelity. But, even though the ""monotonous pale gray"" world must reclaim them, the lovers have their dreams of freedom (and perhaps Alison has gotten pregnant): ""She was the woman who could take his life to its utmost fulfillment. He was the man who had opened vistas of possibility."" Moistly pretentious, but essentially bland and empty.

Pub Date: July 2, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION