The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 14 August 2000
by Carolyn See
This is a very grim book. Mike Davis, in his urban critique City of Quartz and later in Ecology of Fear, asked the question "What is it about Los Angeles that authors repeatedly set out to annihilate it?" This book, certainly, offers a fairly compelling response. Edith, our narrator, flees the stresses of the east coast to return to a cozy abode in Topanga Canyon. She is a driven woman, obsessed with the massing of basic material wealth, mostly jewels of various sorts. Twice divorced, she has a strong moral stripe hidden deep within her, but this doesn't prevent her from the trappings of exclusivity. She dines at the trendy restaurants and sends her daughter to a private school set up by wealthy white parents fearful of the social turmoil rocking the world. The book is one long foreshadowing of nuclear war, and the reader is so browbeaten with the foreshadowing, that the other plot lines become somewhat tedious. Edith, while helping to found a bank, cynically partakes in what is advertised as a financial seminar. What results, though, is a sort of awakening in her and her partner to the great abundance which surrounds us all. Once the expected doomsday arrives, in something of an anticlimax, many of the characters realize just what they should have known all along. The world is an amazingly abundant place, and we now tragically take it for granted. Nevertheless, these characters are not particularly likable. Every single one of them is either small minded and fearful, or selfish in their relationships and many times divorced. See demonstrates a bitter attitude toward men, in general, which is only occasionally well-targeted. She spends one entire chapter questioning whether any men have any feelings at all. Yet she loves her home, and is determined to love its inevitable destruction. The Los Angeles that See describes is worthy of destruction. A gentle warning: if you are inclined toward suggestive depression, you may want to avoid this book.