Synopsis
Manhattan heiress Maria Fishburn returns from a vacation in the South Sea islands with a new fiance, Mgungu Yabba Mgungu, a former cannibal who becomes the toast of Manhattan
Reviews
The author of the bestselling Slaves of New York offers here a less successful effort but an equally sardonic view of the wormy Big Apple, narrated in the stilted voice of Mgungu Yabba Mgungu, self-described as a "brutal and violently ignorant savage, though charming in a primitive way, who was fleeing his wives and 13 children for the charms of a young American, possibly even the Hamptons and the New York Film Festival if everything went well and I played my cards right." Bored and narcissistic heiress Maria Fishburn, a Peace Corps volunteer, scoops up Mgungu, a South Seas purple-skinned cannibal and brings him back to Manhattan to dance at the Museum of Primitive Cultures, marry her and serve as a generally useful conversation piece. Mgungu wanders, picaro-style, the streets of New York and satirizes the natives, from the vapid chic to the Bowery bums. The distinctive device of putting into Mgungu's mouth arch descriptions of creamy pink and puce art deco home decors or of civilized small talk ("I realized that what I was bearing witness to was that thing known as innuendo") waxes tiresome and self-conscious. With her unexplained plot gaps and inclusion of photos that feature herself, the late Andy Warhol and other hip folk, Janowitz manipulates her readers as surely as the hapless Mgungu is used by the depraved criminals who swarm the all-consuming jungle that is New York. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Mgungu, a reformed cannibal from the imaginary island of New Burnt Norton, marries a New York heiress and Peace Corps volunteer preoccupied with her contact lenses. At cocktail parties he wants to discuss Thoreau, while she advises "If you can't think of anything interesting to say just lean against the wall and look savage." The problem with this absurd premise is sustaining it for an entire novel. The satirical one-liners begin to wear thin by the time gangsters trick Mgungu into cannibalism. A series of forced situations finally puts the articulate, sensitive hero in prisonvictim of American greed and decadence. This outrageous novel should enhance Janowitz's status with the avant-garde. Leonard Kniffel, Detroit P.L.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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