THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503020428
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
LIZARD
BANANA YOSHIMOTO
Grove Press. 180 pp. $18.
EVEN WHEN discussing their own promiscuity and drunkenness, Banana Yoshimoto's characters hold a certain innocence and optimism. Sometimes troubled, sometimes merely puzzled, they nonetheless find hope in the glow of a sunny day or the promise of a lover. Unlike the tiresome brats who people the works of certain of her American contemporaries - Yoshimoto is 30 - these young people's despair isn't merely fashionable. Nor does the author gloss over their emotions, which seem fully and truthfully rendered.
Trust is a theme common to the six stories collected in Lizard, the third of Yoshimoto's books to appear in the United States. Family provides succor in several pieces, although the narrator from ``A Strange Tale From Down by the River'' finds that her parents have kept a stunning secret from her.
Yoshimoto revels in the transformative, depicted in romantic bonds and the dreamlike magic practiced by a mysterious figure who leads the protagonist of ``Newlywed'' through the city streets. Her delight in the everyday and things beyond translates easily and ultimately merges the two in a beautiful whole.
- RICKEY WRIGHT
BETWEEN MEN
FIONA LEWIS
Atlantic Monthly Press. 329 pp. $21.
LOS ANGELES thirtysomething newspaper reporter Alice Wilder glides through life ignoring conflicts, just hoping they'll go away - conflicts like, well, men.
Alice falls for Oscar, a married movie director who woos her with champagne, caviar and fast cars. Their affair is all very Hollywood in the 1980s. A fire in a luxurious Malibu condo interrupts their first sexual encounter, firemen breaking down the door, of course, to save them - catching them truly in flagrante delicto.
Alice also falls for Mike, a law student who wants to love anyone who will love him back. Unfortunately for the sensitive Mike, Alice only wants sex, self-gratification being her raison d'etre. She carts the budding barrister to parties, sublimely excessive parties that reek of '80s abandon, simply to make Oscar jealous. Somehow this all doesn't play well in the safe-sex, postmodern '90s.
Hollywood insider Fiona Lewis tells her trashy story of Alice's life - her New York childhood, her short-lived marriage, problems with her mother - largely in retrospect, comingling scenes from the past with scenes of Oscar and Mike. Although she shows stylistic promise and a sense of humor, her characters never do much outside the sheets. Alice's search for her self Between Men basically begins and ends there.
- CHERYL BALL by CNB