A Disturbance in One Place: A Novel [Paperback]

Binnie Kirshenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2004

Brazen and given to transgressions, the narrator of this mordantly witty novel is an aloof, tough talking, married Manhattan woman who carries on three affairs simultaneously, blithely breaking seven of the Ten Commandments in her search for a safe place to land. Rootless, bouncing from bed to bed, she knows she is pure of heart. If only she could find where her heart got lost. Irreverent and achingly honest, she points to the small but infinitely deep cracks in our masks, drawing the reader into her world of misadventure -- erotic, comic, and deeply unsettling. Juggling four men -- her husband, "the hit man," "the multimedia artist," and "the love of her life" -- she can't decide whether she is out to prove or disprove the Talmudic wisdom: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a series of graphic sketches, the author of the witty On Mermaid Avenue depicts a young Jewish woman who passes her days and nights in determined promiscuity as she and her random lovers casually confront their insecurities. New York at its urban dreariest is the background. The sharp-tongued narrator lives without guilt ("I like naked bodies, and when I put clothes on, it's with the idea of taking them off") but desires to understand her past. Does she indulge in multiple liaisons because her father, a compulsive gambler, was a suicide? Is she haphazardly trying to find her Jewish roots? Whatever the reason, her rampant emotions propel her through a series of erotic and often funny encounters that bring her little comfort. The lovers are nameless: a Sicilian hit man; a famous multimedia artist; the aging love of her life; and the placid man she's been married to for four years, whom she refers to only as "my husband." He has a cold streak and, fortunately, doesn't want to know too much. Some sharply defined episodes (a caustic encounter in a Dairy Deli; some nasty words from the hit man's long-dead mother) force this brittle woman to take a long, fresh look at herself. Kirshenbaum seems at times to be on a comic spree, but in the end this is a dark and powerful look at a troubled spirit.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Kisses melt her soul, thrift shopping skyrockets her adrenaline, and love affairs are her daily bread. Who is she? She is a delightfully brazen Jewish New Yorker who has a husband, two paramours, and one true love. Her Italian lover from Brooklyn "speaks like Frank Sinatra sings," deluges her with sumptuous pastas, and begs her to declare her undying love. The multimedia artist is an egocentric, Dutch-treat type of guy who cares more about his art than people but is useful because he gives her "dreamy orgasms." She treats her husband like a postscript since she married him mostly to ensnare the true love of her life, an elderly film critic. Ironically, her true love is a holdout, the only male she fails to hypnotize and lure into the sack. Kirshenbaum ( On Mermaid Avenue , LJ 3/1/93) titillates the reader with a clever novel that explores female sexual forays with frolicsome humor. Highly recommended.
- Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (May 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060520884
• ISBN-13: 978-0060520885
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,743,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Being passionate and lost - that's what it is about....., August 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Disturbance in One Place: A Novel (Paperback)

I absolutely loved this wonderfully emotional and somewhat dark story of a young Jewish New Yorker, who is exploring her world through friendship,love and lust. She is so confident, but can not understand herself at times. She is loving and heartless. She is a chameleon, but a sincere one... It's not your average erotic fiction. There is a lot to think about after reading it.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Want to Be the Narrator--Fantastic Book, May 16, 2004

By 

Susan (norwalk, ct United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Disturbance in One Place: A Novel (Paperback)

I adore the narrator of this book. True, in some ways, she's lonely and feels like an outsider, but then, this is America, who doesn't feel this way, at least 50% of the time. I love the narrator because she is so smooth, such a great player, and even though her intent is not to play people, the men in her life sometimes feel played anyway, but more because they are playng themselves. She has a husband, two lovers, and a love of her life who compares her to a garden-variety snake, "A brief chase and you're easily enough caught. Still, you'll never get warmer than room temperature." This is not to say she's not a hotty in bed, it's just emotionally, she doesn't get sucked into faux-love based on good or bad sex or the loneliness of others. She just does exactly what she wants to, perfectly unconcerned about conventional morality. Clearly, Kirshenbaum has a profound understanding of men and more disturbingly, the human condition. Though the narrator, herself, realizes fulfullment cannot be achieved by collecting lovers--there is no suggestion that there is any better way, either. Ultimately, the implication is not that there's something wrong with the narrator, but rather, that ultimately, life is lonely and there is no cure--only treatments.
Kirshenbaum often deals with the theme of profound loneliness, but like Conrad, she offers no solutions. She offers it as a condition of life, and for those who would pass judgment on the narrator's lifestyle, ultimately she reveals herself not as a "puttanta" but as a Christ- figure, suffering the loneliness of the world. Fantastic book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Now for a Good Roll in the Hay, September 9, 2011

By 

David R. Anderson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Disturbance in One Place : A Novel (Paperback)

Binnie Kirshenbaum's highly sexed novel, "A Disturbance in One Place" (New York, 1994) takes it's title from its epigraph, a quotation from "The Brothers Karamazov": "all things flow and touch each other; a disturbance in one place is felt at the other end of the world."

Virtually all the disturbances take place in one setting, the bed where the narrator, a Jewish housewife I'll call Mrs. Goodhead - she is unnamed in the book -- finds herself at the moment. More often than not these encounters begin with Mrs. Goodhead performing zip-a-dee-do-dah oral sex and go on from there. The book can not be said to be plot driven, it's sex driven: Mrs.Goodhead in overdrive.

It is less clear where the disturbances at the other end of the world take place. But some clues are suggested, although not always what you might expect. For example, her husband seems to accept his wife's nonstop philandering without curiosity or any qualms. How likely is that?

If you like sex, you will enjoy this book. It's good dirty fun. For my money, it is a better read that Nicholson Baker's much ballyhooed, but ultimately boring, new pornutopian fantasy, "House of Holes". That said, you are free to ask, is there more to "A Disturbance" than the sex. Not a great deal. Its strength lies in the narrator's engaging candor about her proclivities. And by the third and last section of the book, Mrs. Goodhead starts to sense that there may be more to life than a rousing orgasm and home cooked Osso Buco. (This in a chapter titled "From Inside the Bone.") Still and all, her dawning self-awareness comes too late to offset the impression that all she really wants from life is a good roll (role?) in the hay.

Endnote. In "On Mermaid Avenue" Kirshenbaum's 1993 novel about two amorous co-eds, Monarose, the more sexually experienced, uses a banana to demonstrate to her friend Edie how to give good head. When Edie doesn't catch on right away, Monarose tells her not to worry, "It's taken me three weeks and four boys to master..." For more detailed guidance on the way to perform this practice see "Sex Tips for Girls," Cynthia Heimel's best selling manual. (New York, 1983).