From Publishers Weekly
A curmudgeonly retired Parisian is the narrator of this delightful first novel by playwright Reza, author of the Tony Award-winning Art. Bienvenue to Samuel's world, where too-cheerful Nancy, his second wife, "doesn't understand that a man who has no place to whine cannot be a normal man," and his disappointing 38-year-old son "crisscrosses the world on the 99 cents he gets from subletting the apartment I rent for him." Samuel's best friend, Lionel, "can't get it up anymore"; his marvelous mistress, the delectable Marisa (aka "my Babylon"), is now only a memory; Mrs. Dacimiento, his housekeeper, hasn't mastered the art of fitting the plastic garbage sack properly over the rim of the garbage can-"Sometimes I long to say, `Have you never put a rubber on a guy?'" The winter of this Parisian's delightful discontent alternates brilliantly between dry humor and wry flashes of heartbreaking wisdom. Crafted with loving care and remarkable attention to voice, this short novel portrays an aging man desperately trying to make sense of life while talking out loud to himself, his son, his buddy Lionel and, finally, to an old friend and fellow gardener, Genevieve Abramowitz, whose response helps him to realize that desolation can be the prelude to one last stab at true communication. "The garden-all me," Samuel discovers, can lead to a late-in-life blossoming. "But the world is not outside us. The world lives within us."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
Reza, best known for her play Art, not surprisingly offers a first novel with the same theatrical quality. The book reads like a one-man show, featuring a monolog delivered by an elderly French gentleman who is both thinking out loud and speaking with various people from his life, including his itinerant son, his lovers, and the friends who have passed on before him. At the end of his life, he's confounded by his wayward son's "happiness" (which he sees as resignation and sloth) and reflects on how close he himself may have come to achieving that blissful state, ultimately wondering what, indeed, it is. The book, while not lacking in wit or some measure of insight, nevertheless feels more like an open-ended character sketch for a future stage production than a complete novel. A slight and curious work that will garner most of its readership from those familiar with the playwright. Purchase accordingly.
Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
