MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD

by Erich Segal ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 1980

Leave it to Segal to come up with an almost-surefire soap-opera gimmick: Prof. Bob Beckwith of MIT, happily married and father of two, finds out that his one-night-stand with a Frenchwoman ten years ago produced a child--and the little lad is now an orphan. Juicy stuff. But also leave it to Segal to lean on the gimmick so hard, so stickily, and in such day-glo vinyl prose as to rob it of virtually all reality. Bob, stunned and angered by the news from France, reluctantly agrees to take Jean-Claude for one month, till boarding school begins and a French foster-home can be found; and wife Sheila, though furious about Bob's confessed infidelity (his one slip ever), goes along. (""God, how could she be so generous?"") So little bilingual J-C arrives to share the Beckwiths' Cape Cod summer (""My God, he thought. He's real. My son is real""), his true identity known only to Bob, Sheila, and Bob's best pal. And while Sheila remains fiercely remote and even considers some infidelity of her own, all goes smoothly (J-C is a tot of unearthly charm and wisdom). . . till Bob's two daughters (plastic-precocious, plastic-sweet) learn the Truth and are traumatized. ""They were innocent victims whose lives had just been permanently disfigured by the shrapnel of his infidelity."" (Love those metaphors, Erich.) Now J-C must go, all agree, but Bob has come to love the kid, so Segal provides a crude deus ex machina: on the way to the airport J-C develops peritonitis, which means he'll stay long enough for everyone to fall in love with him. . . though in the end he'll have to return to France. ("" 'Are you positive, Jean-Claude?' . . . 'Yes,' he said softly, and turned his gaze away. Toward the sea."") With all-new dialogue and detail (and a tess bombastic title), the premise here could make a winner of a TV-movie tearjerker; as it is--weak suds for only Segal's most glucose-tolerant fans.

Pub Date: May 21, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION