Word: anna
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Marie Saint has "a perfectly good figure," that Mitzi Gaynor, in the right kind of "red-spangled straight jacket," exhibits a "rounded female figure, good bosom, tiny waist," or that Hedy Lamarr, though "she's slim, actually," does not allow herself to be padded out. As for Anna Magnani, "When she undressed, we were amazed. Under the black slacks and sweater was the most exquisite of black French foundations." Sophia Loren refuses to wear blue jeans, and Designer Head agrees with her: "There's nothing wrong with her figure, but she isn't the cowboy type...
This first novel by a woman in her forties is an astonishing work, one of the few rewarding books of a so-so season. The spinster of the title is Anna Vorontosov, a schoolteacher in back-country New Zealand. She is a small woman of uncertain age, whose passions are still young because she has never used them. Gifted but a little balmy, Anna primes herself for school each morning with half a tumbler of brandy, frequently gets the weeps, talks persuasively to trees and flowers, has stupendous headaches in Technicolor. Wildly alive, Anna flinches only at the thought...
...When Anna was young and good-looking, an important man wanted her and she refused. Today, there is Paul, whose eyes are "great blue perfect things with lids like lips," and she refuses him also. The reason: neither would speak the magic phrase, "Will you marry...
Many Sires. Love repressed in one area bursts out in another. Anna swims through day after day in a sea of 70 children-white, Maori, and "the brown-white of the New Race"-who overflow her prefab schoolhouse. There are screams from little brown Ara: "Miss Vottot! Seven he's got a knife! He's cutteen my stomat!" Blossom's nose needs wiping, Matawhero's shirt must be tucked in, Dennis' lost pencil found, Twinnie's tears crooned away, lice plucked from Mere's hair. And more screams: "Miss Popoff, Seven...
When Chance decides to lend Macgrady his passport (Macgrady's own is held by the syndicate) for a trip to London for medical help, the doctor and Anna are held as hostages. Not since Faulkner's Temple Drake was held captive in a Memphis brothel has a novelist contrived such powerful scenes of terror. While the key gangster gives Chance a going over, the Arabs begin to riot in the town. Buildings are bombed, the gangster's house is attacked by the mob; and while Chance fights his love for Anna and takes his physical beating...