- Paperback: 180 pages
- Publisher: City Lights Publishers (Jan 1 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0872863395
- ISBN-13: 978-0872863392
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 14 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 259 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
When avant-garde Manhattan theater director Babette Bliss, "a hot-blooded, uninhibited, aggressive Jewish girl from the Bronx," learns that her husband, George, a corporate lawyer, has just had an affair with blonde fellow attorney Nicole Burden, she walks out, refusing to speak to him despite his prostrate pleas to reconcile. Babette's rage, vengeful impulses and hurt and confusion, as well as her ambivalent urge to become a mother at age 35, are sensitively explored in this wholly engaging tale. Eidus, a novelist ( Faithful Rebecca ) and short-story writer ( Vito Loves Geraldine ), creates memorable comic characters throughout. Babette's spouse, George Harrison, looks like his ex-Beatle namesake and tries to woo Babette back with Beatles tunes. Shara-Rose, her blunt, leather-clad psychotherapist, is lead singer in the rock band Mild Neurosis. And Babette's new roommate, playwright Carlos Carlos (a Connecticut-born WASP who assumed a Latino name to rebel against his minister father) tries to lure her into bed by asking her to collaborate on his new play, Hard-Boiled Women , about a tough, assertive female detective. Narrated by Babette in clean-cut, present-tense prose, this is a ruefully funny, wickedly observant take on urban angst.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this up-to-the-minute urban tale, New Yorker Babette Bliss is on summer vacation to deal with crises in her life. She's 35, with her biological clock ticking, her marriage to lawyer George Harrison foundering (especially after she confirms his adultery), and her work at avant-garde Theatre Arts Gallery no longer satisfying. (Even the gallery is threatened; its building has been sold to developers planning to demolish it.) Psychotherapist-rock singer Shara-Rose urges Babette to talk to George (whom Babette, a Beatles groupie, adored from the moment they met), while attractive playwright Carlos Carlos invites Babette's collaboration in his work and company in his bed. Flip and funny at the start, like Babette herself, this novel ends up grounded in reality and tinged with hope. More promising work from award-winning Eidus (Vito Loves Geraldine, City Lights, 1990); not essential but nice entertainment.
Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
5.0 out of 5 stars
A delightful diversion, Aug 24 2004
By Lynn Harnett - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Urban Bliss (Hardcover)
Into this slice of New York City life in the '90s comes a heroine on the verge of crisis.Narrator Babette Bliss, 35, frets about her biological clock, her unsatisfying job at an avant-garde theater and her husband's possible infidelity. She has taken the summer off from work to think through her problems, but the theater is threatened by a group of developers and its director is frantic for her to come back and organize some resisitance.
Babette, however, planning a confrontation with her husband, is deaf to the director's pleas. And once her suspicions are confirmed she's too distraught to spare a thought for a doomed theater.
She decamps to an absent friend's apartment and seesaws between righteous fury and tears, forgiveness and revenge (in kind). In lucid moments she worries about the horrors of apartment hunting, and surviving without her husband's generous income.
Into her life comes a roomate, another beneficiary of the apartment owner's largesse. Babette has always considered Carlos Carlos a cad and a phony - for stealing her friend's wife and for changing his whitebread name. But with greater knowledge comes wider understanding - Carlos is not only worthy of sympathy, he's handsome too. And he sees a spark of creativity in Babette that she has long resisted.
Meanwhile, her rock singer/shrink has decided to give up therapy and devote herself to music, her husband is leaving plaintive messages on the answering machine in the words of the Beatle he resembles and Babette returns to her theater despite her sense of futility.
Should she return to her husband? Have an affair with Carlos? Overcome her writing phobia and become a playwrite?
Babette's dilemma's are not earthshaking, nor will her decisions set her life on an irreversible course but Eidus' playful, wisecracking and vulnerable style sweeps the reader into her world.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blissful, Jun 13 2000
By thad rutkowski - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Urban Bliss (Paperback)
In this comic, ironic tale, Babette Bliss guides us on a totally enjoyable journey through the domestic and artistic pathways of Manhattan, circa 1993. Check out the noise band called Mild Neurosis, and other maddeningly familiar urban icons. --Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Roughhouse
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very enjoyable, July 5 1999
By Opher Liba - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Urban Bliss (Paperback)
Clever, funny, and well written. Like her short stories, and maybe even better.
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