Word: gordons
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Scoring--S, Todd Curry 3,Gordon Mapes 3, Tom Nelson 2, Tim Nelson, Tom Kopple, Brad Kotz, Frank Lanuto, Mark Brannigan. H, Chris Pujols 2, Rob Hawely 2, Martin Garcia, Tom Corcoran, Steve Voelkel, Rob Huribut, Paul Garavente...
...from the U.S.S.R. & Other Plays, Vladimir Nabokov -- Men and Angels, Mary Gordon -- Money: A Suicide Note, Martin Amis -- The Tenth Man, Graham Greene -- This Real Night, Rebecca West...
...Laura and her hidden zealotry may be a menace to Anne or the children. Can the babysitter be stopped before she does something awful? In fact, violence does occur near the end, but the real focus of the novel has long since shifted elsewhere. With considerable skill and subtlety, Gordon has constructed a series of intertwined meditations questioning the nature and even the value of motherhood...
...clearest message of Men and Angels is that the absence of maternal affection can destroy, although not invariably. Gordon's questions and her manner of raising them are more interesting than the possible answers. The novel's intellectual vigor is occasionally blunted by the earnest opacity of its heroine. Despite the assurances of two different characters that Anne has "a first-rate mind," she often must thrash through her solipsism and self-absorption toward revelations that most adults and bright children already know. She sees a pair of boots in a Manhattan store and realizes, since she is now winning...
Such insights may be intended ironically; if so, Gordon gives no clues. For all the novel's virtues and craftsmanship, Men and Angels is remarkably humorless. Being a feminist, and having to reinvent the world, is evidently hard and serious work. And one of the occupational hazards, which Gordon skirts but cannot quite avoid, is sacrificing art on the pulpit of ideology...