| Vendor | |
|---|---|
|
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus |
| Original language | |
| English | |
| Categories | |
BASIC BLACK WITH PEARLS
Nominated for the Governor General's Award
Winner of the Toronto Book Award 1980
In her yearning, elusive search for a lover, Shirley Kaszenbowski sheds her drab "basic black" existence together with torturous memories of guilt and loss as a Jewish immigrant in Toronto.
Shirley Kaszenbowski, née Silverberg, is a middle-aged, middle-class woman in a Holt Renfrew tweed coat, a basic black dress, and a strand of real pearls. She may seem ordinary enough, pricing silk scarves at Eaton's or idling in hotel coffee shops, but in fact she is searching for her lover. He is an elusive figure, a man connected with "The Agency," a powerful technocrat who may or may not have suggested a rendezvous based on a secret code in the National Geographic.
Her search takes her to the world of her past as a Jewish immigrant in the Spadina-Dundas area of Toronto. She finds the bakeries and rooming houses of her youth still haunted by survivors of postwar Europe and by her own memories of guilt and loss, while the consolations of art, opera, and pornography offer only echoes of her own illusions and desires. Her strange, wryly funny odyssey ends in a dramatic confrontation scene with her husband and "the other woman," as she trades in her basic black for another chance.
In Basic Black with Pearls, Weinzweig displays her gift for creating sympathetic characters in a slightly surreal, but always recognizable world.
SCHWARZES KLEID MIT PERLEN
Deutsch Brigitte Jakobeit
[HC Klaus Wagenbach 01/19]
Winner of the Toronto Book Award 1980
In her yearning, elusive search for a lover, Shirley Kaszenbowski sheds her drab "basic black" existence together with torturous memories of guilt and loss as a Jewish immigrant in Toronto.
Shirley Kaszenbowski, née Silverberg, is a middle-aged, middle-class woman in a Holt Renfrew tweed coat, a basic black dress, and a strand of real pearls. She may seem ordinary enough, pricing silk scarves at Eaton's or idling in hotel coffee shops, but in fact she is searching for her lover. He is an elusive figure, a man connected with "The Agency," a powerful technocrat who may or may not have suggested a rendezvous based on a secret code in the National Geographic.
Her search takes her to the world of her past as a Jewish immigrant in the Spadina-Dundas area of Toronto. She finds the bakeries and rooming houses of her youth still haunted by survivors of postwar Europe and by her own memories of guilt and loss, while the consolations of art, opera, and pornography offer only echoes of her own illusions and desires. Her strange, wryly funny odyssey ends in a dramatic confrontation scene with her husband and "the other woman," as she trades in her basic black for another chance.
In Basic Black with Pearls, Weinzweig displays her gift for creating sympathetic characters in a slightly surreal, but always recognizable world.
SCHWARZES KLEID MIT PERLEN
Deutsch Brigitte Jakobeit
[HC Klaus Wagenbach 01/19]
| Available products |
|---|
|
Book
Published 1980-05-11 by House of Anansi Press |