; Celebrating woman

Terry Peters
Contributing Writer

8 Domestic Goddesses by
Edith Vonnegut,
Pomegranate, 63 pages,
$17.95 (U.S.)
_ Edith Vonnegut presents
thirty-four paintings celebrar-
ing the modern woman in this
deliyhtful, little book. She
accompanies each work with
text that challenges traditional
thinking.
Saving that women have
_ been depicted by male painters
through the ages as living
serene and protected lives, she
counters with “A woman's
world is not a dreamy,
enchanted idyll. It’s more like
the marines.”
~~” Her paintings, all of them
tudes, depict strong, deter-
mined women meeting life’s
“.” daily challenges. Shopping,
cleaning, child minding are all
put for forth as noble acts.
Each brightly lit figure appears focused on its
task, whether that be slaying dragons or shield-
ing, against the sun’s rays.
_\.. & Wonderful combination of art and whim-
sy, Domestic Goddesses will capture your atten-
ton and intagination.

@ Family Honor by Robert
B. Parker, Penguin Putnam,
322 pages, $32.99

Fram the well known
author of the Spenser detec-
tive series comes this latest
offering which introduces new
protagonist, Sunny Randall.
Former cop, turned private
detective, and aspiring painter,
Sunny, (short for Sonja), is
supposed to provide a take off
point for Parker to break away
trom his formulistic writing.

With more than avo dozen

Spenser novels published, this
new work will most certainly
draw comparisons and they are
not likely to be kind. Sunny
Randall is the light beer to
Spenser's Scotch on the rocks.
In his attempt to write
through the eyes of a woman,
Parker has just watered down
his Spenser character, washing
away 2 lot of the appeal in the
process.

A young girl in need of
saving, parents in need of a lesson, and a strong
independent female detective ready to take
charge, all appear in a very predictable storyline.

. This is light reading that will leave Parker fans
twitching for a fix of the smart dialogue and
action promised in his next Spenser novel.

Nabokov depended on his wife

‘Catholicism. And she believed unswervingly
in Vladimir's literary talents, sidelining any
- writerly ambition’ cf her own to. translate,
dit, and type his manuscripts. Nabokov was
‘utterly dependent on her presence. .
_: asked by an interviewer how she met her
usband, Véra responded, “Who are you, the

t,”: Vladimir wrote to Véra shortly after :

they. met in 1923, “.).but as one enters.a

kingdom. all ‘the sivers have waited for:

our. ref} all ‘the’ roads for your foot- -

The Nabokovs had a peripatetic lifestyle:.

- Schiff describes one of Vladimir's carly works,
The Return of Sebastian Knight, as “...doubt-
jess the greatest English-language novel to
have been written on a bidet” (in a Paris

“apartment).

- Véra complained constantly of her work-
load, of having no permanent address, but
secretly, Schiff suggests, she was happy as
tong as she was near her beloved “Volodya.”

This was the scene when Vladimir died
shortly after the couple’s fiftieth anniversary:

“Dmiti had driven his mother back to
Montreux from the Lausanne hospital at dusk
on July 2, in his blue Ferrari, on the fast day
of his father’s life. Véra had sat silently for a
few minutes and then uttered the one desper-
ate line Dmitri had ever heard escape her lips:

* ‘Let's rent an airplane and crash.’”

“She seemed to feel she could will some-
one to believe she cast no shadow,” says
Schiff of her subject, “or, if he noticed an
angular black shape trailing behind her, that
that shadow was not hers. She remained a
bafflement to the biographer.”

Until now. ‘

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