The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.
From the Italian-born author, now a Paris resident, an unappetizing little tale about a young woman; this is Jabès’ first book to be published in the U.S.
When Alice saunters through the streets of Rome, old men and boys on scooters stop to stare. When another woman compliments her on her extravagant high heels, Alice offers shy, but pleased, thanks. When she looks in the mirror, Alice loves what she sees—until her father tells her, “If you’re a woman, you’re either beautiful, or you’re nice…You are not beautiful, so you must be…nice.” In an attempt to restore the sense of self destroyed by this casually cruel statement, Alice begins eating. In her effort to be nice to men, Alice becomes a prostitute. These two phenomena coalesce—rather stickily—in a unique sexual specialty: Alice performs fellatio while eating. This makes her very popular with a very specific clientele for a time, but, ultimately, Alice becomes so squalidly voluminous that her customers dissipate. Out of money and out of food, she finally turns herself into a grand meal for two escaped mental patients. That contemporary young women are unhealthily concerned with their appearance should come as a surprise to no one. This is one of the rare points on which feminist psychologists and “family values” types agree, and Jabès doesn’t offer any new perspective on the issue with her greasy, gruesome little fable. Nor does this novella function as erotica; it’s useful neither as food porn nor as the more traditional type. Alice’s feasts of calamari fritters, spiced olives, gorgonzola and raspberry ice cream are rendered as mere grocery lists, and the sex scenes are equally perfunctory. Indeed, pretty much everything in this story is abbreviated—not in the universal and resonant shorthand of myth or fairy tale, but with a rather presumptuous carelessness. The publisher offers this slender volume as part of a series of “short European fiction,” and they’re not kidding about “short”: Even a slow, attentive reader should be able to get through it in under an hour.
The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-903517-51-2
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Dedalus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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