Word: isabell
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Payments, then, lies the desire for complete control over life, for the purity and self-discipline that bring absolute certainty. There is something unique about a modern heroine who can take seriously the conflict between a religious yearning for clarity and the temptation of transient physical pleasures. Unfortunately, when Isabel tries "shaping" her life in the outside world, both she and the book seem to get lost in the muddle...
...interviewing those paid to care for the elderly, introduces her to many new people. But in an already cluttered, lengthy novel, this endless procession of new characters does little more than add confusion and tedium. Even Isabel's closest friends--Eleanor, a flighty sensualist, and Liz, a strong-willed lesbian--are not terribly interesting until they are forced to confront each other...
...novel in which the heroine is supposed to be liberating herself, Final Payments is surprisingly sexist. Having never freed herself from the outdated dreams of her solitary years, Isabel flings herself at almost any man. Her father always was the "strong...
Such a confession seems relatively powerful compared with the tedious sex symbolism attached to Liz's husband, with whom Isabel "commits adultery." With the trashy, soft-core pornographic cliches, this episode strikes one as hilariously funny, regardless of the author's intentions...
...Isabel's final true love is as flat a character as can be. He turns out to be precisely that "slick hustler" who explains her life to her and tries to lead her from extreme orgies of self-abnegation to the moderate pleasures of middle-class womanhood...