My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

June 1, 2009
Comparisons miss when discussing Russell Hobans recent works: Woody Allen? Robert Altman? By a mile. He must be an original. My Tango with Barbara Strozzi concerns Phil Ockerman, a novelist whose most recent effort, Hope of a Tree, is a put-together thing trying to pass itself off as a novel. Ockerman has resolved to stop using his own life for a subject but is stuck for an idea; you can almost see Hoban winking. What is Strozzi about? Difficult to say succinctly. Ockerman romances Bertha Strunk, an artists model coming off a disastrous marriage, but the novel delights us by following a wealth of connections, chance and otherwise. Ockermans imagination and behavior are fueled by passages of music and poetry, glimpses of paintings, facts he learns on the Internet, and the planetary alignments of astrology. Its funny, punny, sweet, and sad (Ockerman is a November sort of person) and, whether a put-together thing or not, succeeds as good art does: it reminds us of our own humanness and encourages us to pay closer attention.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)