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...world's leading historical novelists. From Cape Town, South Africa, where she has lived since 1948, Renault looks back to antiquity where history, legend and myth rocked in the same cradle. The King Must Die, her most widely known book, is also her best, because it leaves the reader with the illusion of having attended the birth of Western consciousness. Theseus was the narrator, and civilization was only a gleam on his sword...
Such loaded passages are frequently necessary to keep the reader oriented in ancient history. Characters, many related by polygamy, swarm out of the giltwork and malachite. All have their ambitions, dreams and passions. One of the refreshments of Renault's ancient world is the absence of modern psychology. All that is needed to define the cast are the seven deadly sins, mainly wrath, avarice, envy and, above all, pride...
Domini's main strengths lie in violent, unconventional metaphor and involved plotting--so involved, in fact, that bristling complexities, few of which are ever resolved, end by frustrating or intimidating the reader. A favorite theme seems to be the middle-aged protagonist grappling with the leftover complications of long-ago some adventure that ripped the fabric of a conventional life: a successful businessman, whom the CIA drugged with LSD 20 years ago as a random experiment, throws himself into the public eye by suing the government for his life's subsequent turmoil; a Vietnam veteran, past 30, goes to Florida...
...FIRST COLLECTION should, Bedlam demonstrates a range of approaches and strengths. "An Encounter," a short tour de force composed entirely of questions (no dialogue), hangs together nicely, and "UI'Lyu, Ooo Ooo Ooo" actually goes a long way toward convincing the reader of the narrator's romantic attachment to "a kind of jellied ball floating off the ground...
...humorous digressions: a riddle that supposedly leaves thinkers catabolic (literally) and a brief parable of a man with no head. Often the pieces do not seem to interrelate, but the editors don't intend them to. Their only goal is to present ideas which will undermine the reader's complacent view of his own intellect...