FICTION

Nine Island

by Jane Alison
Catapult. Sept. 2016. 244p. ISBN 9781936787128. pap. $16.95; ebk. ISBN 9781936787272. F
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J lives in a glass high-rise on one of Miami Beach's alluring Venetian Islands and is seriously thinking of giving up men. In midlife herself, she's seen her now ailing mother flop at many relationships, and she's just returned from a visit with Sir Gold (as she dubs him), an old flame who had seemed interested in reigniting their passion but after a month decides it's not to be and rather casually dismisses her. Meanwhile, she's translating Ovid, which leads not only to some absorbingly sensuous passages but also sharp, lyrical reflections on physical intimacy and the nature of female sexuality as both need and burden; here, we see mythic characters fleeing violation of body and self. Yet as a friend says, "If you retire from love,…then you retire from life."
VERDICT Novelist/memoirist Alison, also a translator of Ovid's stories of sexual transformation, has written an autobiographical novel-cum-meditation that many readers, and not just women, will find intriguing. Passion matters, and who doesn't contemplate somehow moving forward?
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Nov 15, 2016
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