The author of The Mind-Body Problem (1983) and The Dark Sister (1991) again probes the relationship between female intellect and emotion—this time in a sparkling, erudite collection in which brilliant women's minds dictate their romantic attachments while their gender continues to dictate their fate. She was mousy, short, unprepossessing, and even ugly, yet she had managed to write the ``first true masterpiece of Modernism'' and so deserved her acclaim—or so the title character of the first tale, ``The Editor's Story,'' sees E. A. Worthinghouse, author of Chimera and the most successful find of his long career. Dumpy Worthinghouse's social ineptness, disguising a fascinating, innovative mind, reappears in a variety of other incarnations throughout the collection, and the male editor's baffled reaction does as well—in ``The Geometry of Soap Bubbles and Impossible Love,'' in which the somber young daughter of a New York actress plays endlessly with dolls made from forks and spoons; in ``Rabbinical Eyes,'' in which a gifted young Jewish woman marries a Catholic man and must go without the comfort of family when her first child dies; and in ``Strange Attractors,'' in which a self- effacing female mathematician falls in love with a flamboyant, married, European genius. Other tales feature clever female beauties whose brains are as often undervalued—as in ``From Dreams of the Dangerous Duke,'' whose turn-of-the-century heroine dies of brain fever before her intellectual potential can be fully realized, and in ``The Predicate of Existence,'' in which a visiting philosopher overpowers a vain, disrespectful male opponent on the debating floor. Goldstein breaks no new ground in exploring again the paradoxes and implications of mind-body duality—but she develops her theme with such wit and imagination, in styles ranging from gothic to folkloric, that her readers will not mind going along for another ride.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-670-84640-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.
An absorbing story of a modern marriage framed in Greek mythology.
Groff’s sharply drawn portrait of a marriage begins on a cold Maine beach, with newlyweds “on their knees, now, though the sand was rough and hurt. It didn’t matter. They were reduced to mouths and hands.” This opener ushers in an ambitious, knowing novel besotted with sex—in a kaleidoscope of variety—much more abundant than the commune-dwellers got up to in Groff’s luminous Arcadia(2012). The story centers first on Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, a dashing actor at Vassar, who marries his classmate, flounders, then becomes a famous playwright. Lotto’s name evokes the lottery—and the Fates, as his half of the book is titled. His wife, the imperial and striking Mathilde, takes over the second section, Furies, astir with grief and revenge. The plotting is exquisite, and the sentences hum; Groff writes with a pleasurable, bantering vividness. Her book is smart, albeit with an occasional vibrato of overkill. The author gives this novel a harder edge and darker glow than previous work, echoing Mathilde’s observation, “She was so tired of the old way of telling stories, all those too worn narrative paths, the familiar plot thickets, the fat social novels. She needed something messier, something sharper, something like a bomb going off.” Indeed it is.
An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59463-447-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
This overlong (946 pages) and rather pretentious first novel concerns itself with the impasse of the modern intellectual, living in a world where everyone wears a false face of one kind or another, wanting to believe in something, and "knowing" too much to have faith in anything. The scene is Spain, Rome and Paris in Europe, New York City (mainly Greenwich Village) and a New England town in the United States, and at moments an unnamed Central American Republic. The characters, and they multiply- since Mr. Gaddis has tried to write a "novel without a hero", range from hipsters and homosexuals to spoiled Catholics and Puritans to aimless pseudo-intellectuals, town drunkards, and religious fanatics. In what is also a novel without a defined plot, the most interesting parts concern Wyatt Gwyon, as his various activities take him from forging old masters in New York to Spain where he attempts to find some kind of truth; and his father, a New England minister who converts himself to Mithraism- sun worship. But the main fault of the novel is a complete lack of discipline. Gaddis writes with ease and vigor about a Greenwich Village gathering, but repeats this sequence many times. He knows many odd facts about ancient religious and he injects them all. He is familiar with many languages, and there are passages in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Latin and even Hungarian. It is a pity that, in his first novel, he did not have stronger editorial guidance than is apparent in the book for he can write very well- even though most of the time he just lets his pen run on.
Pub Date: March 10, 1955
ISBN: 1564786919
Page Count: 976
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1955
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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