BASIC BLACK WITH PEARLS

by Helen Weinzweig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 19, 1980

As dazzlingly splintered and disorienting as a hall of mirrors, this marvelously inventive sleight-of-pen fantasy may (or may not) represent the jagged self-image of a middle-aged Canadian housewife. Afloat on an erotic quest, the woman who calls herself ""Lola Montez"" shuffles through postcard memories of nights with her lover ""Coenraad,"" the international secret agent. She interprets coded clues as to where around the world they'll meet next. Throughout the streets of Toronto incidents seem to resonate with memory: in a bakery, the woman scatters the owner's money from an ancient cash register and listens to a letter about white slavery from the Jewish Daily Forward; at an art gallery, she holds a conversation with a girl in a Bonnard painting (the girl, she says, is imprisoned by her father); in a cheap boardinghouse, she recognizes each odor, curse, and groan. And gradually, through the consciousness of the woman--a consciousness which whirs away, recording but not connecting--scraps of reality adhere. Her childhood: a mother who committed suicide, a protective but restrictive father, a stepmother who closely guarded her huge cash register. Her present: husband Zbigniew (cool, sadistic, elusive) and two children in a ten-room suburban house. And finally, after the search for Coenraad and a meeting with yet another, orchid-raising fantasy lover, the woman returns home to what seems a vision of herself as another woman: Francesca--the good, dull, undemanding wife. Is this the tale of a mental case? Or are the three men components in a housewife's dream search for a demon lover? Either way, it's a female daydream-spectacular, heavy on scenes from a rotten childhood and lightly dipped in madness--all of it delivered with spotlight-sharp images and iron-grey wit. Glittering, uncomfortable, one-of-a-kind fiction.

Pub Date: Feb. 19, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION