WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF LOVE?

by Thomas Farber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 1977

. . . it was over. Not only could the remaining fragments not re-create the whole, but, memory all too fallible, it was impossible to hold on to the feeling of collective power that had inspired them."" So now, Berkeley and the Sixties (Tales for the Son of My Unborn Child, 1971) receded, Farber's stories watch lovers, married couples, and the divorced, most of them graduates of the Sixties. And love is a drift rather than a fix, a wary adjustment of territoriality, a game, an infinity of matched accidents, needs, or habits. Five days of love vanish into thin air as a girl arrives and leaves with roses; two veterans of hurly-burly lives are re-wed among former lovers, their kids, and an ex-wife who did the catering. A divorced young woman thinks things will work with her new husband until her boy hears ""No, no, not there. That's my chair,"" and much pondering time later she will remember and claim ""my house."" A wife, for whom ""pleasure required a capital P""clings to what she has always despised, ""obligation without love,"" and she and her husband cling to their marriage ""like sailors to a spar, ship long swallowed by the sea."" Farber writes with the absorbed interest of a passive, long-distance bus rider who notes the gestures and dispositions of fellow passengers--remote from judgment and the sting of irony. Like his previous book, this series of brief sketches hits a nerve. . . is this the way it is, now, in the 1970s, ad-libbing, loving without help from a book? Farber is a crafty writer and you'll tag along, wondering.

Pub Date: Oct. 24, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION