Empathy

Rating:
Summary: I re-read them at least 8 times over the years.
Review: Aside from being one of the funniest books I've ever read, it has a special quality: Certain paragraphs will spring out at me and I'll think: "I've always wanted the words to describe that kind of feeling or circumstance, and there on the page are the perfect words."

I tend to devalue words but S.S. reminds me of the power of well-chosen words to strengthen your position in the world. I wonder if that's what people mean when they talk about 'identity'.

Rating:
Summary: I re-read them at least 8 times over the years.
Review: Aside from being one of the funniest books I've ever read, it has a special quality: Certain paragraphs will spring out at me and I'll think: "I've always wanted the words to describe that kind of feeling or circumstance, and there on the page are the perfect words."

I tend to devalue words but S.S. reminds me of the power of well-chosen words to strengthen your position in the world. I wonder if that's what people mean when they talk about 'identity'.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, witty, real
Review: Maybe one of the most intricate and elaborate work about identity I have ever read. Sarah Schulman's writing makes us dive into a historical pool of events and questions each and every one of us have experienced in our own special moments.

Rating:
Summary: It walks so high... then falls off a cliff.
Review: Sara Schulman, Empathy (Dutton, 1992)

Until roughly twenty minutes before writing this review, I was getting ready to say Empathy was going to be a definite for my best twenty-five reads of 2003 list. Then I read the last three chapters.

The first twenty-seven are brilliant. The story's two main characters are Anna O., a lesbian attempting to get over an old relationship and find someone new, and Doc, a post-Freudian therapist who finds prospective clients by handing out business cards on the street and will never keep a client for more than three sessions. Eventually, their two stories intertwine as Anna, finding one of Doc's business cards, makes an appointment with him. The two of them then proceed to take on relationships of all sorts, Jewish funerals, AIDS, the homeless, and a rainbow of other topics with a wicked wit. Doc obsesses over an old girlfriend as well, and feels an almost supernatural connection with Anna. When one of the main questions in a book is "will Doc end up having a fourth session with Anna?", it's impossible to write a review in a way that makes it sound as important as it actually is, but Anna, Doc, and the supporting cast of characters (Anna's family, Doc's patients and mentor, Anna's old girlfriend's mother, Doc's old girlfriend) are so well-drawn and engaging that it's well-night impossible not to be drawn in to the point where you sit up at night thinking about such things.

Then Schulman hits you with the kicker, the novel's climax, and though it's nothing we haven't seen before (telling you where would be the ultimate plot spoiler, however), it's a sucker punch delivered with such aplomb that it demands a "thank you, ma'am, may I have another." I had figured I knew where the book was going, had it mapped out in my head (and it was a brilliant ending, too), then Schulman flipped all my expectations on their heads and delivered what may have been the only climax that was actually better than what I thought it would be.

Then we get to Chapter Twenty-Seven, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. We spend two chapters involved in political polemic that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the novel, and while they are two brief chapters, their very existence in the book poisons the whole thing. Schulman attempts to wrap things up in the last chapter by going back to the original topic of life-after-Doc Anna, but by then it's too late. The rhythm, the style, the all-around beauty of the book has been dashed against a curb on a dark, rainy street.

My advice? By all means, read this novel. Up to chapter twenty-six. Then skip ahead to chapter thirty. You will still find an ending that is an anticlimax, to say the least, but you will at least be spared pointless political diatribe along the way. ** ½