- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Arcade (May 23 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1559703350
- ISBN-13: 978-1559703352
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 544 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,833,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
John Rechy, whose previous novels include 4th Angel, City of Night and The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez: A Novel, is back with this retelling of the stories of the fallen women of history. When an 18th-century French noblewoman has vivid dreams of the lives of Eve, the whore of Babylon, Medea and Mary Magdalene, she comes to realize that they are more than just somnambulant imaginings. Rather, they are actual memories. With the help of Madame Bernice, a friend and mystic, she sets out to tell the true stories of their lives.
From Publishers Weekly
With a colorful ribbon of feminist revisionism festooning its New Age wrapping, Rechy's latest novel indulges in past-life grandiosity and some scandalous speculation about the erotic lives of Adam, Medea and Jesus, among others. An unnamed countess in a decaying 18th-century European city flees to the country after being unjustly accused of having killed her husband, the count. She temporarily escapes a wily plot spun by the count's evil sister and?naturally?the pope, finding sanctuary in the chateau of Madame Bernice, a mystic who helps the countess recall that her "essence" is to be on a "journey of redemption" to vindicate the lives of all unjustly blamed women. In a succession of afternoon teas, the narrator tells the mystic of her incarnations as Eve, Mary Magdalene, Delilah, Salome, Helen of Troy, Medea and La Malinche, Cortes's lover. But the villainous pope is on to them. Rechy (The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez) does capture some of the breathless Perils-of-Pauline pacing of a good 18th-century novel, but some of the incarnations are related with so little verve that they become one-liners. The Trojan War, we learn, was fought because Paris suffered from penis envy. None of the principals?the countess, the mystic, Lucifer, God, Adam, Jesus, Judas or John the Baptist?comes to life. Rechy's spectacle of maligned Woman pursued through the annals of history by a vengeful and petty Holy Father (God, the pope) strives for the power of liberating myth but attains?and only in its best moments?a comic, and cosmic, absurdity.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Awful!!,
By jessiesquash (Arizona) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Our Lady Of Babylon (Hardcover)
I finished this book about a month ago and was recently perusing the reviews and have to wonder if maybe I stumbled on the wrong page?! Did I not understand the book? Did I not get it? I was all into this book, excited that these women were getting a second look! Hurray! Vindication for all those years of playing "blame the women"! Then I got to the end and felt sick! All that great story wasted on laying blame on yet another woman! I felt sick! I can only guess that he was attempting to be shocking and daring, but he only succeeded in being a disgusting misogynist who wrote a trashy novel not worth 1/3 the money I paid for it! (And I bought it at a used book store for $5.00!)
2.0 out of 5 stars
The best part of this book is the peacock!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Our Lady Of Babylon (Hardcover)
I think the idea behind this book is creative. I like the author's attempt to create round characters out of infamous women who have, for the most part, been remembered in history as one-dimensional. What I don't like is the way the author tries to "save" these women, cast them in a better light. Maybe some of these women were whores. But that's o.k. because "whore" hasn't always had such negative connotations. Pagan cultures had holy whores who honored the Goddess. I guess I'm getting off track here, but it just bothered me that the author seemed to be so caught up in defusing the word "whore," in proving that these women were innocents. So they had sex--so what!
2.0 out of 5 stars
Flashes of cleverness not enough to sustain the story.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Our Lady Of Babylon (Hardcover)
Initial flashes of cleverness and artful story-telling rocket you through the first half of the book. From then on, plot and story fizzle out like a guttering candle--and so does the reader's desire to continue on. It's almost as if Rechy is frosting a cake and discovers he doesn't have quite enough frosting for the whole; but instead of making more frosting, he chooses to make do by thinning out what he already has applied. Pity!
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