Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003252171
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by LYNN ECKMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
"You cannot talk to someone who fills the world," says Clara to herself while with Dr. Leo Ulm, a man whose good opinion is equaled by those of his adoring public, his wife and their acquaintances. Why no one ever deflated his gigantic ego remains a mystery because he is cruel, self-centered and downright chauvinistic.
A social philosopher who gives basically the same paper over a 20-year period, Ulm continues to be in demand at scholarly conferences. While attending a meeting in Washington, he has a tryst that borders on the ludicrous with a Frenchwoman.
At home in London he dominates the lives of his former wife, his younger and talented second wife, his daughter-in-law and their women friends. The world in which they live is almost all artifice, pretense, sham.
There are no grown-ups in this small circle. Someone must be in charge, but no one is, says Victoria Glendenning. She depicts the fallibility of all her characters with brilliance and with satire laced with regret as Ulm struts and bullies the women who fawn over him in hope of being loved.
The author of several excellent biographies, Glendenning has welded the accuracy of a journalist to the understanding of a psychiatrist in this book, her first novel. The battle of the sexes may be as old as time, but she makes us see it as though it were brand new.
by CNB