Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991 TAG: 9104030027
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JOAN SCHROEDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rose Boyt, Sigmund Freud's great-granddaughter, seems to believe that mother and father fixations do a novel make. Not true. Her first novel is an unashamed Freudian rip-off, relentlessly grim and devoid of stylistic or thematic surprise or grace.
Isobel Lord is a lonely girl whose father, Anthony, doesn't love her. She spends her life in her food-encrusted bed, waiting for Anthony to care enough to come to her. From her window, she watches her next-door neighbors, Sylvia and Norman, come and go.
The mother-and-son duo, distantly related to Isobel and Anthony, seem remarkably close to Isobel's starved eye, and in her attempt to share their closeness and gain her father's attention, she seduces Mama's boy Norman and becomes pregnant.
Her plan backfires. Anthony fixates on his infant granddaughter, plying her with all the attention he denied Isobel. Sylvia remarries, leaving Norman jilted and alone. The final scene of the novel is Freudianism played to its most egregious outer limits.
The problem with Boyt's book lies not so much in its subject matter as in its formulaic determinism. Boyt presents us with a case history rather than a novel. Carefully, clinically, she places each sordid detail in its place for its intended effect.
After a couple of chapter's worth of scum-encrusted sheets, filthy clothes, stale food and furred teeth, one becomes inured to the studied grotesquery of Boyt's prose.
One can only hope that she will venture into uncharted territory in her next literary effort, relying less on great-grandfather's shopworn theories, and aiming for something more than shock value.
by CNB