This Body

June 1, 1998
A fresh, thoughtful spin on the well-worn fantasy of inhabiting another body, this offbeat debut borrows the cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream and submits them to a very 1990s enchantment. On midsummer night--June 21--39-year-old Katharine Ashley dies of a heart attack in Northern California. The mother of two, whose worldliness consists of having seen the film Woodstock five times in 1970, wakes up a year after her death on a squalid bathroom floor in L.A. She finds herself trapped in the drug- and alcohol-dependent body--and in the unhappy family--of 22-year-old photographer and all-around gilded youth Thisby Bennett. Without any of the discomfiture one might expect in such sitcom circumstances, Katharine navigates Thisby's world, which includes a harelipped sister named Quince and an all-too-attractive brother called Puck. Determined to save everyone (Quince, Puck, her own children and Thisby herself), Katharine discovers much about the temptations and risks of mothering and second chances. It doesn't matter whether this is "a three-second dream before she really dies" or a wonderfully believable wake-up-as-someone-else. The more Shakespeare (and Fawlty Towers and Sesame Street) one knows, the more pleasurable it is to read this crisply written, wry and intelligent book; yet even the reader who falls far short of Doud's knowledge of the Bard will appreciate the emotional resonance of the Katharine/Thisby identity struggle.

May 1, 1998
The premise of this Shakespearean tribute is arresting: a middle-aged housewife dies suddenly of a stroke. A year later she wakes up in the apartment--and body--of a slim 22-year-old substance abuser, alcoholic, and drug courier, Thisby Bennet. Katharine's painful quest to integrate her consciousness with Thisby's body and its demands and to accept the loss of her former family is beautifully rendered, as is her complex relationship with Thisby's Shakespeare-mad family. Desperate for information about the family she has left behind, especially about her beloved teenage children, Katharine hires a detective, and complications ensue. The names of all the Bennet clan come from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and most of the words they utter are quotations from Shakespeare. This can be annoying, but the richness and intricacy of the plot propel the reader swiftly toward its satisfying conclusion. First novelist Doud is a librarian. Suitable for all fiction collections.--Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll., Bronxville, NY