BABY

by Robert Lieberman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 14, 1981

Dozens of fables have used a miraculous musical gift (and its corruption) to sermonize on spirituality, materialism, creativity, etc.--with Tor Seidler's The Dulcimer Boy (1979) a recent example. But while most such parables are delivered in two-dimensional style--whimsical, fairy-tale-ish, or pseudo-poetic--Lieberman's version is densely imagined and full-textured, with enough gritty contemporary details and strong characters to almost redeem the simpleminded basic scenario. The best of these characters is 59-year-old Doris Rumsey, a hunchbacked spinster school-librarian in Ithaca, N.Y., whose increasing job miseries are now compounded by a wretched illness which Doris fatalistically assumes is cancer; and only when it's ""too late to do anything about it"" does Doris realize that she is, in fact, pregnant (parthenogenesis, it seems). So, in a roughly affecting scene, she gives birth to ""Baby"" alone in a country field--a miracle child, of course. . . especially when infant Baby begins to sing: incredible, poignant, wordless melodies. And when Doris takes Baby to the park, the singing draws enraptured passers-by--like Irwin Shockley, a Cornell prof and Pulitzer-winning composer whose own musical inspiration has dried up: he becomes obsessed with Baby's songs, first tries to use them in composing, then determines to devote himself instead to bringing Baby's music to the world. Thus begins, after Shockley and wife Ruth befriend Doris, a tug-of-war over Baby: when Doris is in the hospital for a hysterectomy, Shockley sneaks Baby off on a tour of musical academia; Doris grabs Baby back; Shockley successfully plots for Doris to be declared an unfit mother (her insistence on Baby's ""virgin birth"" doesn't help her) and gets custody for himself. But Shockley's triumph is short-lived: his Baby-obsession alienates his wife and daughters (one of whom, jealous, nearly drowns Baby); his musical-purist plans for Baby's concert tour are turned into sequinned commercialism by a N.Y. manager; Baby's musical gift is transmogrified into religion by a controversial ""Babyist"" sect; and then Baby is kidnapped in N.Y. (a comely napper seduces Shockley)--a suspense climax complete with $4 million ransom demand, an all-star telethon (to raise the ransom), Doris' own search for Baby (whose voice she can hear from miles away), plus Baby's rescue and near-death from pneumonia. Finally, then, Shockley sees the error of his exploitation ways--but too late: Doris will die, and so will the music. Some of this skirts the ludicrous, of course; and, at nearly 400 pages, the homily-like theme often seems unduly belabored. But Lieberman is a talented storyteller--reminiscent (in the dry, compassionate Doris portrait) of Don Robertson--and at least half the time this simplistic yet un-saccharine novel is strongly involving and oddly moving.

Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1981

Categories: FICTION