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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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