Customer Reviews

The Late Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (Vintage Contemporaries)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Since "The Mind-Body Problem" by Rebecca Goldstein delighted me so much with both its clever style and original story, I could hardly wait to read the author's second novel "The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind". My sense of disappointment, however, was evident about half way through the book. I liked the set-up, and I recognized Goldsteins playful descriptions and otherwise vivid language; however, the story just loses focus and its nerve. The first part of the book is the best - when Eva Mueller, the popular and eccentric philosophy professor, befriends her student, Michael Miller, the eager philosophy groupie, disc jockey and swimmer. The attraction is actually quite believable between the mature scholar, who has dismissed the notion of romantic love, and the young student, who is attracted to "the human condition" with both its good and bad consequences. However, when the story leaves the budding relationship and flips to Eva Mueller's childhood in Germany and her parents' involvement in the third reich, the story suffers. Don't get me wrong, that part of the book is also fascinating, but not in this book! Or, at least, the transition leaves the reader straining to assume renewed interest in the story. I still give the book 3 stars because I delight in Goldstein's writing style and the way she makes her characters so impossible not to care about. Overall, a decent book, but if you are reading Goldstein for the first time, choose her superb "Mind-Body Problem"!

This story of a German born academic Eva Mueller in the American university world has its main energy and interest in the first part of the book. Goldstein is very good at integrating 'intellectual material' into the story and makes a convincing picture of her heroine in that way. The story of her love - affair with an embittered and cruel Jewish intellectual whose parents are survivors is strong and interesting. The main story however relates to a time years after this affair when the post- menopausal heroine becomes fascinated with a young Californian- born student of hers who works in his spare - time as a radio D. J. . This young man has two sides, one that of budding series intellectual and the other of Dionysian lover of pleasures of life in the moment. Eve who believes she has long lost her need for human connection in love discovers in her tutorials with the student that she has not gone beyond passionate desire. This part of the book is quite interesting. But just as we move to the critical moment Goldstein steers us for the second half of the book into a long tale about Eva's background. Her father was a music scholar who wrote a treatise which served the Nazi regime. This long digression is quite boring and when there is a return to the central affair of the novel Goldstein appears to have run out of steam.
For those however who like Philosophy with their novels , and especially those who would like to know more about Plato's and Spinoza's respective philosophies of Love and Freedom this book should be a real pleasure.

This is the sort of book one can spend a magical, beautiful afternoon reading. Goldstein's prose is beyond compare... her writing is precise and beautiful. She has the remarkable ability to explain the inner life of an intellectual woman in an authentic and detailed manner.
This book chronicles the awakening of a philosophy professor to the world of pleasure. In short, the conversion from the life of the mind to the life of the body. It is a sensual book, but by no means erotic, at least not in any explicit way. The beauty of the story is that the reader gets to watch the changes within the mind of the main character.
However, this book, despite the beautiful writing, has its flaws. For example, Goldstein tried to incorporate flashbacks of the main character's childhood in wartime Germany, and this really does not work. If the flashbacks had been merely alternating chapters, it might have succeeded; however, Goldstein lets the entire novel go off track for far too long. The main character's background is fascinating, and would have made a fine novel in itself, but it severely hampers the style and plot of the rest of the book.
For a Goldstein fan, this is a must-read, but if you've never read Goldstein, I would recommend starting with her excellent The Mind-Body Problem (Contemporary American Fiction) first.