CUSTOMS VIOLATION

by Janice Weber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28, 1987

A wisecracking, irreverent spoof of modern sexual mores from Weber (The Secret Life of Eva Hathaway, 1985) that sends up everything from yuppie supermarkets to the women's movement. Floyd Beck, a 35-year-old customs inspector, yearns for a woman who will ""knit him slippers."" But the modern world being what it is, he's involved with Portia Clemens, a man-hating veterinarian who castrates a Dalmation and calls it a sex-change operation. After she breaks up with Floyd (he's a man, after all), she requests that he ""inseminate"" her. Disgusted, Floyd longs to return to his roots. He journeys to Switzerland to learn how to make ""Floydwurst,"" the sausage his butcher-father named after him. (""Count Waldstein had a sonata, Mae West had a life preserver, I have Floydwurst."") There, in a complicated tangle of coincidences, he reunites with his first love (Viola Flury, a lingerie designer with ""knees compact as fennel""), and in the disguise of Count Carnegie, charms three ""liberated women"" out of their sisterhood and into bitter rivalry for his attention. He also gets to make Floydwurst--which tastes awful. Although he and his love must part, Floyd returns to his customs job a healed man. It's a wacky, fantastical plot involving a microchip scam, an illegal drug called ""Cursex"" (a semen substitute), a trigger-happy Swiss hotelkeeper, and puppies. Something John Irving might conjure. Busy, but fun.

Pub Date: Aug. 28, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION