A Disturbance in One Place: A Novel - Softcover

Kirshenbaum, Binnie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060520884 ISBN 13: 9780060520885

Publisher: Ecco, 2004

Synopsis

Brazen and given to transgressions, the narrator of this mordantly witty novel is an aloof, tough talking, married Manhattan woman who carries on three affairs simultaneously, blithely breaking seven of the Ten Commandments in her search for a safe place to land. Rootless, bouncing from bed to bed, she knows she is pure of heart. If only she could find where her heart got lost. Irreverent and achingly honest, she points to the small but infinitely deep cracks in our masks, drawing the reader into her world of misadventure - erotic, comic, and deeply unsettling. Juggling four men - her husband, "the hit man," "the multimedia artist," and "the love of her life" - she can't decide whether she is out to prove or disprove the Talmudic wisdom: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

About this title

About the Author

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of An Almost Perfect Moment, On Mermaid Avenue, A Disturbance in One Place, Pure Poetry, Hester Among the Ruins, and History on a Personal Note. She is a professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts, where she is chair of the Graduate Writing Program.

From Kirkus Reviews

Set in New York, like its frivolous predecessor On Mermaid Avenue (1993), Kirshenbaum's second novel takes a semiserious look at adultery. ``I have broken seven of the Ten Commandments,'' the nameless heroine tells us, adding, ``Guilt does not prey on me. My sleep is that of the innocent.'' Guilt isn't the only thing her account lacks; the reader waits in vain for any sort of subtext to enrich the events being retold. The narrator for the most part simply relates how she balances her sex life and keeps a husband and two lovers simultaneously enraptured. The acts themselves are neither erotic nor graphic, alternating between leaky bed play and out-of- body float. Lover number one, called the Hit Man, is a handsome Sicilian-American professor of history who publishes books about Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, lives in Little Italy, cooks, and snaps his paramour into firecracker orgasms; although he knows she's married, he wants her to be all his. Number two, ``the love of my life,'' is a multimedia artist: nothing to look at, with Nazi numbers tattooed on his forearm, and a drag in bed--quite monochromatic. Left-handed, half-Jewish (she denies her paternal Methodist heritage) and apparently jobless by choice, the protagonist can't cook, sew, or clean house. What she can do is help her mainly offstage husband with the Sunday Times crossword puzzle and serve her lovers a creamy dish of vagina Alfredo. She's an expert as well on oral love and erections, and when the artist fails to rise, she tells him, `` `It's never happened with my other men friends.' I don't want him getting any ideas that I could have anything to do with this, that I am the emasculating queen, the wicked witch of Limpland waving my craggy wand over once rigid cocks, turning them to jelly.'' Juicy sexual history, but mysteriously un-nourishing. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060520884
• ISBN 13: 9780060520885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224