Fear

The coupling of art and commerce. It is the story of a writer, an Englishman named Fear, who lives in Paris, burdoned by debt.

A British expatriate living at loose ends in Paris, protagonist Fear is persuaded by his banker to write an erotic novel, and the sections of this work-in-progress (about a woman known only as the Pigalle Girl and her lover, a pilot) are by far the most engaging chapters of this new novel by British writer Lane (Still Life with Books). Aside from writing the book, Fear spends his days dodging his debts, drinking presents and musing about the quirks of Paris. While some of his observations are trenchant enough, they don't do much by way of a plot, and the supporting characters remain paper-thin. Although the novel posits itself as a commentary on the pursuit of art versus the lure of commercialism, Fear never establishes himself in the reader's mind as a serious artist (unless a chronic lack of funds and a tendency to befriend bartenders are credentials). Fear's erotic novel is published and achieves success, but plot developments conspire to keep him in exactly the circumstances where he was found at the novel's outset. This mildly titillating tale will please more readers with its sex scenes than with its commentary on the City of Light or the writing life.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sly, sexy, fable-like exploration of the wavering line between art and commerce, following a writer as he tries to work himself out of poverty by cranking out pornography. Fear, a gifted, spendthrift, outrageous poet and novelist, given to drinking bouts and fleeting affairs, is living in Paris and down on his luck when his exasperated (and alluring) bank manager, Madame Jaffr, suggests that he produce something ``commercial. . . erotic perhaps,'' to bail himself out of his considerable debt. It's not only the bank that he owes: There's also Harm, a thug waiting with increasing impatience for the $10,000 Fear has borrowed and neglected to pay back. Worst of all, Fear feels numb, ``as if his senses had been switched off.'' In an attempt both to meet his debts and to climb back toward some sort of emotional sanity, Fear begins to write. He bases his novel on a girl from the neighborhood of Pigalle with whom he spent one remarkable night. She confided to him then that she was hopelessly in love with an airline pilot. Britisher Lane, the author of one previous novel published here, Still Life with Books (not reviewed), weaves long passages from Fear's novel about the ``Girl from Pigalle'' and her pilot lover into his own present narrative. Fear's book is, in fact, sweetly sexy, and his struggle to puzzle out how to write about sex allows Lane to muse over the difficulties of describing desire. Fear also discovers that, without his conscious knowledge, a book that began as a cynical means to generate money has taken on a life of its own, becoming, by virtue of its honesty and fascination with character, a work of art. As much about the peculiar alchemy of art and the similarities between art and desire as it is about a hapless character, Lane's slender meditation is penetrating, witty, and provocative. A deft, winning performance. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Fear is a British writer living in Paris. Harm is his bill collector. When a bank manager, Madame Jaffre, encourages Fear to write an erotic novel to raise money, he follows her advice. This novel within a novel proceeds as Fear writes about a U.S. airline pilot's affair with a French woman in Paris, and as Fear's own life unfolds through the perspective of an anonymous female narrator who eventually has her own sexual encounter with Fear. This book reveals the selling out of a writer, but Lane's own elegantly crafted prose loses nothing in this undertaking. Even as Lane faithfully details the paranoia often experienced by those deep in debt, he inspires the same yearning for the beauty, romance, and creative energy of Paris that Ernest Hemingway expressed generations ago. Highly recommended for adult sections of all public and academic libraries.?Carolyn Ellis Gonzalez, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.