From the author of the gloomy gothic Ringarra (1986): an uncertain, meandering blend of sex-farce, academic satire, and Jewish-family sitcom--faintly amusing at best, despite a certain droll stylishness (more English than American) in the delivery. Though she's the title character, zaftig art-historian Felicity Norman--a British research fellow at Long Island's Pequod College--is oddly colorless: dumped by Prof. Bernie Lefkowitz (who's afraid of commitment), Felicity pines and whines--till her search for J.M. Whistler's lost erotic etchings takes her to the vast Swiss villa of obese porn-connoisseur Taraq ben Mollah. Meanwhile, campus stud Bernie--though chased and nearly raped by nubile sophomores--becomes randily infatuated with gymnast/feminist Mariana Ashmole, a stern virgin who needs to preserve her ""auric energy."" Meanwhile, too, a few subplots are doodled with: a gay art professor's obsession with Russian icons; the sexual hangups of Bernie's friend Martin, glimpsed ""flailing himself with a long stiff hairbrush flecked with blood""; the moanings of Bernie's mother (a would-be WASP) over the Bernie/Felicity breakup; the Boesky-esque disgrace of Bernie's father, Jewish scapegoat for his WASP-y law firm. And, most extraneously, there's a series of campus rape-assaults, including one murder--but the suspense leading up to the culprit's unmasking (and castration) is negligible. The sendups of feminist jargon here (""vaginal vocabulary,"" etc.) seem dated, as does a reran of some familiar diaphragm slapstick. The ethnic humor, despite hardworking details, features as many wrong notes as right ones. And the finale--involving drugsmuggling, a radicalized harem, and a long-lost brother's coincidental reappearance--is more silly than zany. So this is strained cartoon-satire overall, blandly derivative (if occasionally off-putting), but with enough whimsical erudition and narrative zip to be relatively painless and mildly promising.
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