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Rating: 
Summary: Sara Paretsky, a great punch-line eater!
Review: This review concerns a few stories by Sara Paretsky, "A Taste of Life" being the first one of them.Sara Paretsky writes short stories like other people drink tea. Each story gets its real meaning with the last page, the last sentence, the last line. The punch-line that turns the whole story upside down. In A Taste of Life, she shows how a daughter can be the victim of a cannibal mother who steals all she wants from her daughter out of plain fear of competition or out of spite. She steals her slimness and beauty for forcefeeding her. And she even steals her love. But the punch line makes the conflict pathetic by turning it inside out. The mother meets with her righteous retribution. In Dealer's Choice the turning upside down of the situation is quite striking but less meaningful. It is after all nothing but a small very traditional detective story. But in The Man Who Loved Life the punchline takes a very general meaning. The big pundit of pro-life activists, of religious biggots about the family-centered society and the father-centered family, is destroyed when, during a big commemoration of the role of the hero in the fight for life and the protection of the unborn, it is revealed that he did not know his own wife followed the other track. He looks like a fool and the pro-life movement is revealed to be nothing but a male chauvinistic sham. Brilliant. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Rating:
Summary: Sara Paretsky, a great punch-line eater!
Review: This review concerns a few stories by Sara Paretsky, "A Taste of Life" being the first one of them. Sara Paretsky writes short stories like other people drink tea. Each story gets its real meaning with the last page, the last sentence, the last line. The punch-line that turns the whole story upside down. In A Taste of Life, she shows how a daughter can be the victim of a cannibal mother who steals all she wants from her daughter out of plain fear of competition or out of spite. She steals her slimness and beauty for forcefeeding her. And she even steals her love. But the punch line makes the conflict pathetic by turning it inside out. The mother meets with her righteous retribution. In Dealer's Choice the turning upside down of the situation is quite striking but less meaningful. It is after all nothing but a small very traditional detective story. But in The Man Who Loved Life the punchline takes a very general meaning. The big pundit of pro-life activists, of religious biggots about the family-centered society and the father-centered family, is destroyed when, during a big commemoration of the role of the hero in the fight for life and the protection of the unborn, it is revealed that he did not know his own wife followed the other track. He looks like a fool and the pro-life movement is revealed to be nothing but a male chauvinistic sham. Brilliant. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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