THE BUTTERFLY PLAGUE

by Timothy Findley ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 1969

Grand guignol in Grauman's Chinese? Who knows, and even harder to explain the bizarreries increasingly bereft of meaning which take place here in the Hollywood of 1938 when there is a monarch butterfly plague as well as a plague on both houses-- Hitler's Germany from which Ruth returns after two years ysical talization; and her own family where her mother is dying of cancer while she andher brother Dolly share blighted bloodlines. They're hemophiliacs and he's a ""hemo-homo."" Most of the unaccountable activities are submerged in madness on the one hand, death on the other, and there's a hallucinatory safari into a local canyon, a paradise where they are attacked by reptiles, leeches, fires. Before it's over most of the personnel has been disposed of in one way or another, while George, the father of these hapless two, stages a comeback for a former star Letitia (Titty) as The Little Virgin, she of the shaven wrists. The carious elements are often disguised in opulent and outre manifestations. Some of it is in high drag; most of it is just a drag.

Pub Date: April 25, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION