Concertina

Coriola, aged forty-one, pregnant for the first time, and tending to a mother dying of cancer, tries to sum up and make sense of her life

Within the brief compass of almost any paragraph within this remarkable first novel (published simultaneously with the author's first collection of short stories; see below), the central character, Coriola, is caught at various stages of her life, from infancy through pubescence, adolescence and several phases of womanhood to her death. The narrative focus is fixed on her sexuality both in fantasy and in fact, and that is also the isolated element in the lives of others. From the pubescent "despair of discovering nothing is as it seems" and the "inexplicable paroxysms of joy" experienced by 10-year-old girls in the throes of a crush on each other, to her seduction at the hands of her female horseback-riding instructor and a series of later affairs with men, an erotic biography evolves in sudden glimpses and quick scenes. Fitzgerald's psychologizing can be excessively literal, but her insightinto the deep-lying subconscious of the emergent woman is compelling. Her prose, though mannered and discursive at times, is generally strong and vibrant. There can be no mistaking the arrival of a formidable writer.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fitzgerald's first novel, Concertina , follows heroine Coriola backward and forward in time, moving from her unhappy childhood; through her seduction by a lesbian riding instructress and subsequent anorexia, her work as a striptease dancer, and her happy marriage that brought her a daughter of her own; to her deathbed, at age 75. As she lay dying, "she was aware, in the silence, of a concertina in time, of the clashing of plaintive sounds as past, present and future meshed into end and beginning and love . . . love is the air, contained and unseen, against which the instrument vibrates and makes sound." Rope-Dancer , the collection of short stories being published simultaneously, takes its title from a painting by Man Ray, "Rope-Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows." Like the painting, the stories are bright, dynamic, and highly abstract, as bodies undergo weird and erotic physical transformations. More imaginative, perhaps, than Concertina , the stories may require a more adventuresome reader as well. Both are recommended for adventuresome fiction collections. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.