A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: a world to float away to
Review: I found this book very charming. The front page of each chapter contains a lovely pictorial reference to the Japanese floating world of Edo, a reinforcement of the feeling the book evokes, of an ephemeral age and time - a signature of a particluar generation - this one in the 1980's in a city that itself is a delight - San Francisco. Its characters are an ensemble of detached, almost superficial, visually cued men and women (boys and girls?) of late twenties redeemed by their sense of kindness and by open caring and affection. It reminded me very much of a book of equal sweetness set a decade ealier in the 1970's - Vibram Seth's The Golden Gate, a lyrical poem set in the Bay Area that captured the mixed up romances and changes of a different, more hopeful, pre-AIDS generation. Both books have a lightness and loving nature with the City itself more a stage than stadt.

The chapters intertwine characters and timelines like a Shakespearean Oberon, Titania and the path-crossing lovers. The only shortfall is that we never get to know any one character very well. All educated, some are users, some self-consciously detached, a few with a described past, none with exact ambitions. What they all share is a "floating" before landing into the not yet arrived-at weight of jobs, marriage, committment, irrevocable choices or downhill slides, as they pass into their 30's. Maybe many of us landed earlier, especially now that marriage is a sooner thing than it was in the 70's and 80's. But even without a connection to either a belated coming of age, being young in the 80's or a feeling for S.F. (I lived in S.F. in the 70-80's), this is still a reading pleasure, at least a light read for the beach, a cut above the predictable romances. It's bound to refresh.

Rating:
Summary: Sly, funny, and swooningly romantic
Review: I'll confess that friends of mine I've recommended this book to have not uniformly embraced it: Some have been blown away, as I was; others checked out pretty quickly.

So if my headline makes you go "No way," then you might want to take a pass.

But to everyone else I say: It's an absolute dream of a novel, and hugely enjoyable. A sixth star if you actually lived through the era.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful writing, but a bit all over the place...
Review: It is impossible not to be transported back to the early 1980's in San Francisco while reading this book. The cast is huge, and we get to see only a small sliver of their life...which is a bit annoying. We also don't have any or very little background on most of the characters as well. However, the book still is a good read, for it intertwines art and poetry into the daily events of the not-yet-ready to become full-fledged adults' lives.