Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...theme of oppression as an inevitable part of love functions in this novel as a sort of clothesline on which selected vignettes from the heroine's life are hung. The technique of spotlighting only important periods of Stephanie's life results in a rather choppy narrative. Ideally, each chapter would contribute to a deepening understanding of the tyranny-of-love phenomenon. Unfortunately, the author so frequently loses control of her material that references to her putative theme seem to have been tacked on to each episode as afterthoughts. Her conclusions about the crippling side effects of love do not develop...
Lovers and Tyrants is a "woman's novel" in the worst sense of the expression. Instead of the Great American Novel Francine du Plessix Gray wanted to write, she has produced a pretentious Fear of Flying, replete with third-hand insights about liberation and the mandatory ain't-it-awful references to the Vietnam War, political assassinations etc. Gray even presents her own version of the quest for the "zipless fuck...
LIKE FEAR OF FLYING, Gray's novel ends on a rueful but upbeat note that seems unsupported by the bulk of the novel. Perhaps it's time someone wrote a dark feminist novel; if the problems are as agonizing as Gray tells us they are, why do the heroines always manage to breeze through them by the end? There must be a number of women whose lives have been poisoned by the conflicts Stephanie supposedly resolves. All Gray's protagonist has to offer in the way of hard-earned wisdom is a cutesy line about taking the bad with...
Roots most closely resembles a historical novel, a form that Haley does not seem to have studied too carefully. His narrative is a blend of dramatic and melodramatic fiction and fact that wells from a profound need to nourish himself with a comprehensible past. Haley recreates the Old South of mansions and slave shacks, fully aware that chains and blood ties were at times indistinguishable. The book dramatically details slave family life-birth, courtship, marriage ("jumping the broom"), death and the ever present fear of being sold off and having to leave your...
This question is not as flippant as Hubert makes it sound. Indeed, it has theological overtones that echo through the novel. Behind the glitter and chatter...