Volume 21, Number 11 · June 27, 1974
The Dangers of Nostalgia
By Roger Sale
Let's Fall in Love
by Carol Hill
Random House, 268 pp., $5.95
The Sightseer
by Geoffrey Wolff
Random House, 272 pp., $6.95
Bijou
by David Madden
Crown, 500 pp., $8.95
The Wanderers
by Richard Price
Houghton Mifflin, 239 pp., $5.95
Carol Hill's Let's Fall in Love has such a bad title that one quickly feels driven to invent others. Like Let's Get Away from It All. On page 3 we are in 'Zurich: 1:22 P.M.,' on page 4 in 'Leeds: 4:01 P.M.,' on page 6, 'Rome: 4:17 P.M.,' and, still on page 6, 'The Riviera: 6 P.M.' In Zurich a girl is running naked through the snow toward her papa; in Leeds two British agents look at the same girl in a newspaper; in Rome Anna denounces the tardiness of Plato with 'Fuck Italy, first the Fascists and now a pimp who can't tell time'; on the Riviera someone called 'I' is asked by his friend Santiago as they look at a girl on the beach: 'I'm going to rape her, do you care to watch?' Then, after the rape: ' 'Did it strike you as prurient?' Santiago asked as we drove along the highway, the night air fragrant with the smell of honeysuckle and the sea.'
Review, 3377 words
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