THE TRUTH ABOUT LORIN JONES

by Alison Lurie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

Lurie's eighth is a fascinating exploration of sexual behavior: the story of a biographer's treacherous search for her subject, a contemporary American artist named Lorin Jones, who died in 1969. As Polly Alter, Lorin's biographer, knows when she undertakes her project, the artist's life was sadly fragmented, her artistic achievement stunted by powerful men--gallery owners, critics, lovers. This leads Polly toward virulent feminism, and hostility to the men she must interview, who, she fears, will never tell her the truth she presupposes. At the same time, Polly's own life undergoes subtle derangement: An unpleasant divorce and months of celibacy lead her to experiment with lesbianism, and her son abandons her for her ex-husband in Denver. Falling back on her work, Polly wrestles with techniques for interviewing the men who ruined Lorin. Her lesbian friend, Jeanne, counsels feminine charm and seduction, though Polly's own instincts are for combativeness. Gradually, and blunderingly, she collects diametrically opposed versions of Lorin Jones as victim and victimizer, tortured saint and egotist, visionary creator and drug addict. She even finds herself seducing Lorin's last lover in Key West and falling in love; back in New York, in an argument with Jeanne, she sees herself as the man in a ""caricature of a traditional marriage."" In the end, she opts to tell all versions of Lorin Jones and ""let the devil take the hindmost,"" reclaims her son's love, and chooses heterosexuality. Altogether, then, a fine and probing novel--subject only occasionally to overstatement or easy flourishes (like a surprising eleventh-hour reconciliation between Polly and her errant father)--that scrutinizes and then explodes preconceptions about what it means to be male or female.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION