Foreign Bodies

It's Paris, 1952, and Bea Nightingale has been enlisted by her insufferable brother to find his 20-something son, Julian, who has disappeared in the city. Julian's sister is also involved. And then things get complicated. The author uses a Henry James novel as a springboard for the story and then dives into a whole new pool. Tandy Cronyn does an outstanding job narrating this multilayered novel, using her nasal-tinged tone, which is scratchy but compelling. At times, her voice sounds classically trained and proper, qualities that perfectly evoke the ambiance of the early 1950s. At other times, her voice is remarkably supple, particularly when she depicts characters and describes the Parisian scenery. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

October 25, 2010
Ozick's somber latest (after Dictation) pursues the convergence of displaced persons in post-WWII Paris and New York. In the summer of 1952, Bea Nightingale, a divorced middle-aged high school English teacher in New York, has been dispatched by her bullying brother, Marvin, a successful businessman, to Paris to bring home his wayward son, Julian, who turns out to be an ambitionless waiter now married to an older Jewish woman, Lili, who lost her husband and young son in the war. Ozick deftly delineates these fragile lives as they chase their own interpretations of the American dream: the son of Jewish-Russian immigrants, Marvin has remade himself in the WASP mold required of Princeton and his blue-blooded wife; his well-educated but rudderless daughter, Iris, is also on Julian's trail and hungry for the feminist inspiration her Aunt Bea imparts; Julian and Lili grasp each other like a mutual life raft; while Bea herself is intelligent and clear-eyed about everything but her own heart. Unfortunately, Ozick doesn't make a convincing case for all the fuss over Julian, and the perilous intersections this novel sets up derail into murky and, for the reader, frustrating sidetracks.