From Publishers Weekly
Issues of gender identity move from the philosophical to the physical realm in these two racy, startingly inventive novellas of genital anomaly set in contemporary London. "Cock" introduces Carol, a dissatisfied housewife who, while coping with her husband's sloppy alcoholism and her own quest for sexual fulfillment, sprouts a penis. "Bull" tells of John Bull, a rugby enthusiast and frustrated sportswriter who awakens one morning to find behind his left knee a strange, deep wound that he will soon learn is a vagina. Self ( The Quantity Theory of Insanity ) relates these Kafkaesque fables with an acerbic wit and a narrative mastery that make the absurd seem credible and the commonplace absurd. Indicting all listeners and tellers of stories through "Cock" 's vituperative narrator and through "Bull" 's mockery of journalism, Self treats his readers alternately to biting satire and to flashes of insight, delivering all in zestfully erudite language.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
From Library Journal
If David Lodge were to collaborate with Monty Python, the results might resemble this wickedly playful, gender-bending pair of novellas. The first, Cock: A Novelette, concerns Carol, a passive young woman trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, who starts developing a penis. Personality changes soon follow, leading to unpleasant consequences for Dan, her loutish husband. Bull: A Farce , meanwhile, involves a typical Englishman, archetypally named John Bull, who wakes up one day to discover a "wound" on his leg that turns out be a vagina. The doctor who examines him develops a more-than-professional interest in his new genitalia, and the two begin a confused affair. While gender complications play an obvious role in these satiric tales, Self's real target is "the horror that shadows each and every aspect of the ordinary." Recommended for public libraries.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
