Review by Booklist Review
Barthelme takes a theme from D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love-- the ideal relationship between the sexes-- and updates it with a contemporary twist. Unfortunately for Barthelme's characters, the passion is fleeting and their individuality is fully attained only in physical separation, so that Laurentian ecstasy isn't the result, just a nagging restlessness and a hope for the better. The feelings here are totally in accord with Barthelme's usual observations-- see his Second Marriage [BKL D 1 84]-- as a middle-aged man is unexpectedly visited by his separated wife on his birthday. Their reunion is interrupted by the appearance of the wife's current live-in friend or lover. A second woman now joins the party to offer her views as a friend of the wife, a critic of the husband, and a possible partner for the boyfriend. Enter a third woman, the husband's ex-lover, who has just left her own husband and who may or may not have designs on any of the above characters. The reader may end just as confused as these characters, but that's part of the book's charm and design, as Barthelme ponders just what really binds people together in our time. JB.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Edward Lasco gets a surprise on his 40th birthday: his wife Elise, who left him six months before to become an independent woman, comes home . . . with her boyfriend Roscoe. But they're not sleeping together, Elise insists, because Roscoe, an affable psycholinguist, is still mourning his wife, who died in a car crash. Should Edward accept the odd threesome Elise wants to impose on him? Should he try to win her back? He still loves her, though the erotic embers have long since died. Or should he take up with his ex-girlfriend Kinta, a hypersexed fanatic who suddenly reappears? The reader doesn't much care because these self-obsessed characters with their big libidos are a bore. Novelist/short-story writer Barthelme ( Second Marriage , Moon Deluxe ) sets this overwritten narrative in a faceless new South of malls and video stores. There's a lot of talk about sex, but not much happens, sexually or otherwise. (October) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Sex, marriage, and alcohol are gone from his life, and Edward does not miss them. But when his estranged wife Elise retuns from her beach house, his 40th-birthday weekend is shattered by temptation, self-doubt, and Elise's lover, Roscoe. Barthelme returns to familiar ground in this hilariously disturbing new novel. As in Second Marriage ( LJ 9/15/84), which focuses on a different type of love triangle, he uses his protagonist's house as a stage. Unfortunately, he bogs down in endless discussion of the triangle, once fertile soil that is plowed to exhaustion. Still, the novel is rich in the societal peculiarities Barthelme notes so well, a quality that makes his sardonic study of post-feminist angst so entertaining. Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Disconnection defines this contemporary love story (a sort of wacky update of the film Jules and Jim) in which a fictional mÉnage of lovers talk their lives away in loopy conversations, and always at cross purposes. Barthelme advances beyond the narrative extremes of his minimalist short-story collections in this, his third novel. But it's still full of trendy stuff, beginning with the very relationship alluded to in the title, though even that is a matter of flux and shifting alliances. Edward Lasco, the prevailing consciousness here, has been living alone for six months since his wife, Elisa, left him for a job a hundred miles away. During this enforced bachelorhood, he's grown used to spending his time watching TV and reading computer mags, and has developed an obsession with cleanliness. When his wife of nearly 15 years suddenly reappears on his 40th birthday, he's torn between desire and loathing--an emotional geography mapped out in his Catholic youth. What Elise proposes is a ""very modern relationship"" since it's to incorporate her feelings for Roscoe, who's something of a clone of Edward, and who lives plationically with Elise, even though they were lovers long ago. Others want to get in on this sexless love affair: Lurleen, Elise's fat feminist friend; and Kinta, an old girlfriend of Edward's who exudes animal lust. That they're all childless and work at unknown jobs is beside the point, since all this ping-pongy conversation takes place over one weekend--a weekend that ends with no resolution, but with a weird affirmation of Elise's love (and that involves Kinta urinating on Edward). Barthelme pads out this ""sixties art-movie version of things"" with random scenes of weirdness and menace: closed fast-food franchises, traffic jams in the middle of nowhere, a boy kneeling in the street being run over, a long list of cereal names, and so on. Non sequiturs pass for wit among the zombies who people this nightmare of the living dead. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
