<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe not spectacular, but a good read nonetheless
Review: Harriet Rose is in Geneva, combining a travel fellowship with visiting her best friend Anne, who had rather recently moved to Geneva to be with her married, much older lover, Victor. What Harriet finds is an Anne unrecognizable from her best friend and former roommate. . . an Anne so dominated by Victor and his subtle (and some not so subtle) controls that she ceases to have an identity of her own and exists merely as Victor's mistress.Harriet desperately wants to rescue Anne from what she perceives as a harmful relationship. Anne is uncertain as to her to own desires and motives. Victor, the forceful former-Auschwitz survivor, has his own agenda. This odd triangle reaches the point-of-no-return as the reader waits to see just what will happen. The novel is written in three parts. Book One is a journal of sorts, in which Harriet records her concerns for Anne, along with her observations of Anne and Victor. She writes this journal in letters addressed to her boyfriend, Benedict, and uses it as a sounding board for her concerns and frustrations. This is by far the best part of the book. Harriet's observations are witty and scintillating, and at the same time piercing, as she tries to penetrate through Anne's "strange new mistress/person". Books Two and Three are told in third person. Book Two fleshes out Harriet's personality by giving her family background and childhood stories, cumulating in a situation not dissimilar from the one she faces now. Book Three picks up where Harriet's journal leaves off and follows Anne and Victor and Harriet to the conclusion. I was disappointed by Anne's character. Even knowing that her true personality was being overshadowed by Victor, I never caught so much as a glimpse of "her". She appeared two-dimensional and I did not find myself as concerned for her as I should. Harriet, on the other hand, was a delightful character, full of life and enthusiasm and spirit. I enjoyed her journal immensely. Despite my complaints, this is a solidly good book and worth a read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book To be Studied By Writers, Delicious for Readers
Review: I had an intuition about reading this book and I was right. It's rich, dense, withstructural decisions with which one might not agree, BUT it is wonderfully memorable, complex, a rare great read. In addition, as said in my long title, above, reading this as a writer: it's a goldmine. Because Ms. Weber carries this book with a consciousness that mixes the mundane life we all live with a literary savvy we can also enjoy (what some of us live too). To put this simply: the plot can take anyone along but the real treat is to see how an "intellectual" can create an accessible world that has so many philosophical and photographic insights also dispersed throughout. I read the middle flashback section after the first and last because I needed to keep with chronology. But, however you choose to read this, do so. Recommended for those who love a good read and recommended especially for writers. Many many tricks of the trade are embedded if one reads this with a writer's eye. Thanks, Ms. Weber, for a book that seriously challanged this non-fiction writer to reach for more range in my own work. A marvel.
Rating:
Summary: Penetrating and Unusual
Review: It is a sign of the quiet brilliance of Ms. Weber's narrative skills that the people of of this book entered my heart through the reflections they created, passing through different periods of time. Unusually structured to draw its readers into deeper perceptions and feelings, this novel is a luminously lit journey. I can think of few other writers working today who can approximate the depth Ms. Weber plunges through and still sustain such warmth, humanness, and wit. I knew these people as if, at the end, I was looking in the mirror at myself. I can think of no higher value for literature than the achievement of this kind of empathy and engagement from a reader. It is a beautiful and ingenious book.
<< 1 >>
| 
