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Intimacy
Weaving a life from broken threads - warring Jewish and Catholic parents, alcoholism, faltering political idealism, adultery, divorce, an estranged son, mental illness, and domestic violence - Cecilia holds fast to her fragmented identity and struggles forward, gaining momentum as a survivor. (Nancy Pearl)
180 pages, Paperback
First published December 27, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 20, 2025
This is gorgeous writing, and spare. I am giving it 3 stars instead of more because several times subplots emerged that seemed to come out of nowhere, involving dramatic actions by characters that didn’t seem consistent or believable based on the characters’ previous actions/how the narrator describes them. The personality of the main character’s second husband made no sense to me.
The best aspects were some vivid descriptions - for example a child who has been sitting in the bathtub too long is described as a “prune floating in foam.”
And the following excerpt about a passionate but disillusioning affair:
“I have a feeling of being saved, as if someone said, “Put an umbrella over that girl’s head.”
And he did it. For a moment. Yet I feel sure that I am rocking toward the center of evil. And soon I will know exactly what evil is. I mean, I will know for sure, because I really know already.
Evil is rocking. Evil is deception, a lullaby… you can close your eyes and think: I have found the one who owns me, who owns me so completely he can never be separated from me… Evil is when you open your eyes and there is nothing there.”
The best aspects were some vivid descriptions - for example a child who has been sitting in the bathtub too long is described as a “prune floating in foam.”
And the following excerpt about a passionate but disillusioning affair:
“I have a feeling of being saved, as if someone said, “Put an umbrella over that girl’s head.”
And he did it. For a moment. Yet I feel sure that I am rocking toward the center of evil. And soon I will know exactly what evil is. I mean, I will know for sure, because I really know already.
Evil is rocking. Evil is deception, a lullaby… you can close your eyes and think: I have found the one who owns me, who owns me so completely he can never be separated from me… Evil is when you open your eyes and there is nothing there.”
April 5, 2019
Digging deep into my to-be-read pile. The credit card slip (remember those) hidden within informed me that this one has been languishing on the shelf since July 1994. It’s about a woman who drinks her way through two marriages in the Arizona desert, Paris, France, and New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. The protagonist is brutally honest about her feelings, lays her soul bare. It ought to have been a depressing read, but it really wasn’t.
June 21, 2016
I came across this book at a library book sale. The dust jacket promised "contemporary literary fiction." Contemporary to 1989, that is.
I thought this was an accomplished and convincing look at alienation and of the search for intimacy. Chace's writing is as lean and spare as the desert landscape that is the setting for a great part of the book, and it produces a solipsistic, dreamlike mood.
I thought this was an accomplished and convincing look at alienation and of the search for intimacy. Chace's writing is as lean and spare as the desert landscape that is the setting for a great part of the book, and it produces a solipsistic, dreamlike mood.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews