Pure Poetry
A Novel
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Meet Lila Moscowitz, a smart-mouthed, Jewish American beauty with a voracious appetite for sex, a remarkable talent for outrageous lies, and an unerring knack for screwing up her life. An accomplished poet, renowned for writing "smut and filth in terza rima," she goes about her life in Pure Poetry with enough attitude and verve to win your heart forever. But since fleeing the all-consuming passion of her marriage to Max, the sexy German, she can no longer compose so much as a couplet; ghosts have taken over her Greenwich Village apartment, and the contrast between her feelings for her present lover and her former husband is breaking her heart. And neither her best friend, Carmen, nor her cross-dressing analyst, Leon, is able to soothe her angst over her impending thirty eighth birthday, an occasion fraught with a thirty-seven year tradition of emotional devastation. But time waits for no woman, and the dreaded birthday does bring insight: Love can be undone by the same desires that nurture it. Lila knows that she has got to take action, and in doing so she comes to realize some startling truths about herself, her capacity for love, and the nature of true freedom. Binnie Kirshenbaum's voice has been acclaimed by critics and readers alike. Already a bestselling author in Germany, Kirshenbaum demonstrates a brilliant maturity in Pure Poetry. Not since Erica Jong's Fear of Flying has a novel so captured a woman's heart and desires. Readers will cheer Pure Poetry for its heady mix of humor and sadness, and for its slyly unsettling visions of modern life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and femme fatale Lila Moscowitz is in top form, and at rock bottom, in Kirshenbaum's relentlessly sassy tale of a beautiful 34-year-old Jewish woman on a quest for love and happiness. Lila is a minor New York celebrity, famous for her bawdy yet formally rigorous sonnets, but her success as a writer can't compensate for the fact that she pines for her ex-husband, German cartographer Max Schirmer, while feigning interest in her current blue-blooded boyfriend, Henry. Having sabotaged her marriage to Max in part because she felt she'd betrayed her Jewish heritage by marrying a German, Lila cracks many tepid, transparent jokes about loving the enemy in an attempt to mask her enduring passion for him. Another truth she hides from is that her passion for and dependence on Max threatened her sense of self. Lila's fear of trusting people is rooted predictably in her unsatisfactory family relationships, which Kirshenbaum describes in heavyhanded fashion. Lila's parents barely acknowledge her existence, though her mother, Bella, is as domineering as she is dismissive of her daughter. When Bella dies, Lila is not even informed of the funeral and, in an unconvincing scene, is kicked out of the house where the family is sitting shiva. Other plot twists, details and supporting characters are equally ineffectual: Lila wants to be 32 again, so she enlists her best friend Carmen to help her turn back time; Lila's apartment is haunted by two ghosts, her therapist is a cross-dresser and Henry keeps his parents' ashes in shoeboxes. The cast of characters make a sketchy backdrop for Lila's ongoing monologue about her search for happiness, but the heroine's path is obstructed by so many self-consciously irreverent jokes and cliched observations that she doesn't generate sympathy until the end of the book. Here, however, some of Lila's quandaries achieve resolution, and her journey seems worth it when her emotional complexity shines through her defensive wisecracking.
