Capable of such a telling line as "the bedroom looked like a bedroom in a consoling children's story," Colwin surely will...
Can you make an adult novel out of four pretty, happy, rich, smart, rather sweet, and thoroughly two-dimensional Manhattan characters?
The answer is yes, sort of, if you adopt the knowing, slightly smug comic tone that one finds in New Yorker cartoon captions. Colwin, whose previous fiction (Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object) juggled stylistic sophistication with women's-magazine sentimentality, here abandons the heart-on-sleeve for the tongue-in-chic, setting off echoes—some engaging, some just coy—of such disparate romance-watchers as Dorothy Parker, Hollywood in the Thirties, and, most disarmingly, P. G. Wodehouse. She alternates between two romances—the happy marriage of Guido and Holly and the pseudo-harrowing courtship of Misty Berkowitz by Vincent Cardworthy (Guido's cousin). These folks have what you'd have to call minor-league problems. Very romantic Guido (who oversees the family arts foundation) has to learn to accept that picture-perfect Holly sometimes needs to go off and be alone; she's afraid of getting too used to everything being so wonderful. Even more romantic Vincent (who is the Board of Planning's expert on garbage) has to cut through language-expert Misty's Jew-among-Gentiles hang-up and her anti-romantic, serf-protective (and rather tedious) snarlings. Through most of the problematic festivities—Misty's jealousy, Holly's pregnancy—it's a pleasurable relief to find the business of contemporary relationships being tossed around so blithely and reaching such cheerful resolutions. And there are a slew of funny lines ("Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed") and near-cartoon supporting players to juice things up. But eventually we don't feel that the theme ("Our trouble is that we don't know how things are supposed to be any more") has been dealt with—or, more important, that we really know any of these ultimately somewhat annoying people.
Capable of such a telling line as "the bedroom looked like a bedroom in a consoling children's story," Colwin surely will produce a story that stays in the mind; this edgy, expert entertainment seems to be trying to leave something behind, but it all rolls merrily right by without a trace.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1978
ISBN: 0-307-47440-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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