FALLING BODIES

by Sue Kaufman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 11, 1973

More mad money? No doubt, since this is again about one of Sue Kaufman's harassed housewives who may or may not pass that Headshrinker's Test (the one before the last) -- they're all pretty much the same and so is their urbanized and unencumbered life (they have yet to pick up any appliance heavier than the Water Pik). Thus Emma Sohier who has had a bad year which included her mother's death (cancer -- one of the more urgent scenes set here) and her own long hospitalization from some Fever of Unknown Origin which has left her unnerved by fugue states involving falling bodies (two of them -- the nude with two poodles across the way, and the old man in the hospital -- were real). Emma's home now with the South American paragon, Maria Nonez, the maid her mother-in-law has installed -- a disquieting presence; with Benjy, their careful child, who is now unapproachable and doing strange things like burning his bedsheets in the incinerator; and with Harold, her husband, whose galloping hypochondriasis seems to have reached unnatural proportions -- or lack of them. And then there's her insistent friend Minda who talks incessantly (and entertainingly). Miss Kaufman manages all tiffs input cleverly -- phasing in and out from present to past even if the final retrieval is both too stagy and too convenient. But it's an alert and sympathetic hype and much of the successful pop chemistry of Miss Kaufman's books lies in the fact that we can think of ourselves trapped in these same precarious situations while easily hedging their attractive discomfort with the fact that it is actually happening to someone else.

Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1973

Categories: FICTION