Word: strasser
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...Grace Strasser-Mendana, slowly dying of cancer, tries, as the sardonic narrator of the book, to understand herself and the increasingly unintelligible world around her. She declares that she will be the witness in history to a California woman and by empirical evidence will piece together Charlotte Douglas's life. It is through this narration that we learn that Charlotte believes the world is peopled with others like herself and, as a result, selectively remembers events to conform to this idea. Charlotte has lost her child, Marin, to history, and this event disrupts the complacency of her life. The newspaper...
Charlotte's fear, Grace Strasser-Mendana tells us, is that of looking back. The axiom, "Remember Lot's Wife, avoid the backward glance," dictated Charlotte's life until Marin disappeared. And then despite her outward ignorance of the world around her--her desire for this child like protection from life--the past is unwillingly thrust upon her as an explanation for the present complications. But for a person who has always believed that things work out fine in the end, the rising to the surface of past failures is the ultimate blow. "It wasn't the way she thought...
...sarcastically humorous--often bitingly so, in a gratifying way--without making the entire novel seem frivolous or lightweight. Although there are problems with A Book of Common Prayer--perhaps a bit too much fun is poked at the adherents of all political movements and the interaction between Grace Strasser-Mendana and Warren by its very complexity is less effective than other points of the novel--it is by far a more impressive and complex book than a mere Patty Hearst story would be. Well, maybe not complex, but certainly of more consequence and interest than any discussion of the menstrual...
...distressed California woman. Charlotte Douglas is the victim of a romantic idealism so hermetic that self-knowledge is impossible. The currents of revolution and privilege scarcely ruffle her hair. Incapable of reflection, Charlotte moves, therefore she is. This unexamined life is filtered through the tough mind of Grace Strasser-Mendana, Colorado-born widow of a Boca Grande plutocrat...
...evidence uncovered by Grace Strasser-Mendana does not clarify the murder. What is clear, however, is that Joan Didion has produced a remarkable modern variation on Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. Her technique may seem feverish but it is calculated to give the novel its unique quality-a blend of literary invention and the sort of lurid stories found on the "freak-death" pages of big-city newspapers. Her ear for contemporary speech rhythms, her eye for the incriminating details rank with those of William Gaddis in J.R. But it is Didion's romantic imagination...