The Late Summer Passion of A W

by Rebecca Goldstein

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679728236
• ISBN13: 9780679728238
• Release Date: April 1990
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Length: 261 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A good first half

This story of a German born academic Eva Mueller in the American university world has its main energy and interest in the first part of the book. Goldstein is very good at integrating 'intellectual material' into the story and makes a convincing picture of her heroine in that way. The story of her love - affair with an embittered and cruel Jewish intellectual whose parents are survivors is strong and interesting. The main story however relates to a time years after this affair when the post- menopausal heroine becomes fascinated with a young Californian- born student of hers who works in his spare - time as a radio D. J. . This young man has two sides, one that of budding series intellectual and the other of Dionysian lover of pleasures of life in the moment. Eve who believes she has long lost her need for human connection in love discovers in her tutorials with the student that she has not gone beyond passionate desire. This part of the book is quite interesting. But just as we move to the critical moment Goldstein steers us for the second half of the book into a long tale about Eva's background. Her father was a music scholar who wrote a treatise which served the Nazi regime. This long digression is quite boring and when there is a return to the central affair of the novel Goldstein appears to have run out of steam. For those however who like Philosophy with their novels , and especially those who would like to know more about Plato's and Spinoza's respective philosophies of Love and Freedom this book should be a real pleasure.

Great for the Goldstein fan, but not her best

This little novel is the sort of book one can spend a magical, beautiful afternoon reading. Goldstein's prose is beyond compare... her writing is precise and beautiful. She has the remarkable ability to explain the inner life of an intellectual woman in an authentic and detailed manner. This book chronicles the awakening of a philosophy professor to the world of pleasure. In short, the conversion from the life of the mind to the life of the body. It is a sensual book, but by no means erotic, at least not in any explicit way. The beauty of the story is that the reader gets to watch the changes within the mind of the main character. However, this book, despite the beautiful writing, is far from perfect. Unfortunately, Goldstein tried to incorporate flashbacks of the main character's childhood in wartime Germany, and this absolutely does not work. If the flashbacks had been merely alternating chapters, it might have succeeded; however, Goldstein lets the entire novel go off track for far too long. The main character's background is fascinating, and would have made a fine novel in itself, but it severely hampers the style and plot of the rest of the book. For a Goldstein fan, this is a must-read, but if you've never read Goldstein, you'd do better to start elsewhere.