ALBA

by Delacorta ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1989

Welcome back to the ultra-pop world of Delacorta (Diva, Luna, Vida, etc.), where this time the hero buries his face in the absent heroine's T-shirt to recycle himself spiritually--as a fanatical sect of blind people plots to kidnap same heroine to use as a patron deity. The heroine, as readers familiar with Delacorta's previous day-glo fantasies already know, is Alba, innocently carnal 14-year-old sidekick to fabulously wealthy anchorite Serge Gorodish. Alba, out walking on the beach near Serge's Golden Pagoda in southern California, meets blind Jason--who's supposed to snatch her on behalf of the Group but instead fails in love with her wholesome sleaziness and runs off with her after holding up a supermarket. The Group retaliates by kidnapping Jason's sister Lynn (tracked to her apartment by the menacing Sniffer); but Serge, doing time for littering the beach with a cutout paper model of a B-52, takes off to rescue Alba--with the help of Ben, a suspiciously blind prison librarian; Alice, a Sinatra junkie and obsessive wiretapper; and the Wonderful Pink Airplanes, a football team. Could anyone doubt that after wading gaily through 200 pages of nefarious plots by the blind, gravely outrageous love letters (some baked in Braille in chocolate-chip cookies), and off-speed metaphors (Alba's laugh, for instance, is ""shrill enough to lift the enamel paint off a Chevy van""), Serge and Alba will mete out swift justice to the Wise Ones, freeing their blind lackeys to pursue lives of self-actualization in the company of the most respected brand names? More breathless and, yes, more tired than Delacorta's other comic strips for grown-ups. But if you're amused or impressed by conversations about whether the soul of a Cadillac is between the paint and the body, this is the book for you.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly--dist. by Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION