The Lion's Share

The Lion’s Share is an uncommon love story, a delving into the creative process, and a forum for issues of arts censorship and recovery from childhood sexual abuse.

This story of late-blooming love, set against the obstacles of career, artistic expression and the scare of previous relationships, is closely observed and sensitively told. Living and breathing New York’s SoHo art scene, Jana, a career-minded painter has just met Ed, a soft-hearted arts funder. She is faced with juggling a budding relationship with her studio painting, and the biggest challenge in her tenure as the curator of a small art gallery.

The 34-year-old virgin could be ready to begin a serious relationship, but why is she suddenly bombarded with memories, dormant for so long, of a childhood summer in a camp infirmary? Ed may succeed in providing himself to Jana, but will his corporate employer interfere with her controversial art exhibition thereby destroying their already delicate relationship?

Jana, a curator at a small New York art gallery, is engaged in the artist's eternal struggle for recognition. She enters competitions, spends summers at Yaddo and paints obsessively. She is also 34 years old and a virgin. Traumatized by a doctor's sexual abuse when she was a 10-year-old at camp, she avoids men, instead lavishing attention on her collection of stuffed animals, even cuddling up at night with her pet lion Leroy. When she meets Ed, a kind man to whom she feels increasingly attracted, she tries to liberate herself from her past and accept his love. As she embarks on her most critical struggle--to understand and resolve her childhood trauma and unlock her adult sexuality--she also begins to paint more freely and successfully. Unfortunately, Ratner's ( Bobby's Girl ) writing is stilted, and her characters are fettered in a bland, intellectualized two-dimensionality. Jana's conversations with friends and her own interior monologues are neither sufficiently personal nor sufficiently imaginative to illuminate the process of her healing. Although the premise is worthy, the story never generates enough passion, sexual or otherwise, to be truly satisfying.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A second novel from poet and American Book Review editor Ratner (Bobby's Girl, 1986), whose heroine's struggle for normalcy and fulfillment, while most admirable, packs as about as much punch as the stuffed animals she collects. Like Leroy, the toy ``Lion'' of the title, Ratner's characters are arbitrarily assigned roles that provide the necessary opportunities for 34-year-old Jana to grow. Jana, an artist, gallery director, and curator of an upcoming important art show in New York, was sexually abused as a child at summer camp. Fearful subsequently of men, she has relied on the comfort of Leroy and his pals, so when Ed, grants officer of the corporation underwriting the show, takes an interest in her, Jana is tempted to flee. And in a way she does--temporarily--by spending the summer at Yaddo, but she can't quite forget nice Ed, with the bald-spot and potbelly. A slow and well-documented courtship, including visits to gynecologists, comes next, and Jana becomes a woman at last. But now there is the pressure of her show--an artist has submitted a potentially controversial piece that might offend the corporate sponsors--as well as the question of her painting. Can she have it all, or must Ed be sacrificed for art? Her old animal pals aren't any help either, it seems, so when the remarkably sensitive, tolerant, and generally wonderful Ed tells her that he understands exactly, Jana realizes ``anything's possible'' and ``change was nothing to be afraid of.'' Jana's fears and difficulties are vividly and sympathetically described, but her relentless self-absorption--along with the thinness of the other characters--minimizes the impact of her coming-of-age. More sketch than portrait. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Artist Jana Replensky seems to be battling the same problems as many women in modern society: a stressful job, unfulfilling relationships, and a need to find herself. As she tells Jana's story, Ratner gives us a very intriguing look at the artistic community and how much art galleries are at the mercy of corporate businesses. Ratner is also very successful in presenting what happens to young Jana after she is molested by a 70-year-old doctor at summer camp when she is ten. This dark secret has all but destroyed Jana's relationships with men. But when she is forced to work with Ed, a corporate businessman, on a funding project for the gallery, it turns out to be a liberating experience. A very well-written look at the emotions and problems Jana has encountered, this is recommended for all public libraries with a note that there are some explicit scenes. Ratner is also the author of five books of poetry and Bobby's Girl ( LJ 10/15/86).
- Vicki Cecil, Johnson Cty. Lib., Greenwood, Ind.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.