Foreign Bodies

A good book, displaying all of Ozick's strengths: shimmering intelligence, crisp writing, humor, and a compassionate but clear eye. Somehow it seemed a little undone to me, perhaps due to having so many layers for a relatively brief book. But it is thought-provoking and very well-written. Perhaps better for fans of Ozick than newcomers.

The book is said to be a reversal of Henry James's "The Ambassadors," and there's a reverse look at "Jane Eyre" as well. The setting -- Paris, New York and Los Angeles in the early 1950s -- is beautifully conveyed. There is a sense of callousness and ferocity not only in Postwar Paris, teeming with exiles and survivors of the Holocaust, but in most of the male characters. Family relationships are a show more minefield. Wives, daughters, girlfriends are bullied, used, ignored or abandoned. To be a son is to strive to escape your father's failure, or, worse, success. There are no "nice" characters. But they are all memorable. show less

I've never read anything by Cynthia Ozick beyond a short story or two, so I thought to remedy this with this book. Set during the 1952, Foreign Bodies is the story of Bea, whose life has been on hold since her husband left her years earlier. She goes on a trip to Europe and her brother orders her to find his son and to bring him home. She fails, but is now enmeshed in the life of her brother's family. Her brother is a blow-hard who has estranged every member of his family and it's not hard to see why, but those family members aren't very nice themselves and it's hard to see why Bea is willing to involve herself in all that drama. Bea, through all the family drama, wakes up and begins to take an active role in the lives of those around show more her, finding that while it's difficult to change one's own life, it's relatively easy to have an impact in the lives of others.

Oddly, while I liked none of the characters and disliked several of them, and wasn't gripped by the plot, I could not stop reading this book. It's written in an old-fashioned style, which suits it's post-war setting and has a fearsome momentum that left me turning pages, uncertain of what lay around the bend. show less

Set in 1952, Bea is an almost-50 year old, divorced high school English teacher. She gets sucked up into the drama of her estranged brother's messed up family, and this takes her away from her boring life in New York to both Bohemian Paris and a Beverly Hills mental institution. The story was interesting, if you can suspend disbelief and accept that she would allow her brother to bully her relentlessly. And Ozick is a fabulously gifted writer. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, but maybe it was my mood because the second half didn't do much for me. I think I was tired of the characters by then--none of them are particularly likeable.

The thing I really didn't like about the book was an undercurrent of nastyness. I'm not talking show more just "dark," because I like dark. There was something else unpleasant going on, and I wonder if Ozick is a bitter and angry woman. This is reflected in both the characters and her word choice. show less

Parts of this book are excellent. I gather it is a retelling of the plot of Henry James The Ambassadors though the sex of some of the characters is changed as are many situations. The best part is that it's set in the 1950's so benefited from the addition of Jewish WWII refugees - "those people" as they're frequently referred to. They seem to be pretty equally despised by Americans and the French, as if they are to blame for their situation. The man, a possible Vichy sympathizer, who sets up services to aid in their reunification with their families could have been a sympathetic character. However, there are few sympathetic characters in the story, none of them men, so it seems his desire to assist the refugees was that he wanted their show more influence out of France and into Jerusalem or anywhere else he could find for them to go. Bea the narrator and main character was quite a surprise, both to the reader and to herself. She interferes in ways she never would have dreamed of doing before the whole adventure began, she formed alliances she never would have considered and she gained respect where she never would have looked. Rich Jews and rich Christians were equally obnoxious, as were both children. In fact everyone in the book except Lilly the survivor was so extremely self centered it's amazing they ever left the house and their own company. More than once I found myself saying, "Huh!" It's an interesting book, but choppy. show less

Start with a recommendation from David Foster Wallace; add in a novel that got a lot to do with one of my five favorite novels (James' Ambassadors)... well, you'd think I'd love it. And yet, I conclude, meh.

First the fun stuff (fun, at least, for people like me): Ozick takes James' 'ficelle,' the character who exists only to let the plot carry on doing what it needs to do, and turns her into the main character. I always fall in love with James' ficelles (usually single/'oldmaid'30ish women who are smarter and kinder than anyone else in his novels), so I was immediately excited by this. Sadly, I am not in love with Bea. Anyway, Ozick then moves the plot of the Ambassadors to the fifties, and instead of Americans, makes it about Jewish show more Americans. I don't really care, although there are some possibly interesting bits about Jewish American young men falling in love with Jewish European displaced person middle aged women.

Now, the sillinesses: Americans in California are philistine idiots, even if they were once promising artists. Americans in Europe are post-romantic idiots, even if they were once promising scientists. Americans in New York, though, are all tremendously sensible. Even Europeans in New York are tremendously sensible. And this isn't just a 'New Yorkers know better' thing. The characters who stop by in New York become sensible for just as long as they're in New York. Suffice to say, as an Australian who has lived or presently lives in Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, I find this sort of thing pretty irritating. I've never felt more insane and silly than the few days I've spent in New York. The literary disease of making everyone except the utterly, utterly stupid philistines consumers of great literature (including one character who's related to Proust) is in full flow.

Other than these points, it's meticulously, perfectly crafted, and has absolutely no emotional or intellectual interest or weight whatsoever. I imagine that Jewish Americans who live in New York will be very flattered. Otherwise you might want to stick to, say, The Ambassadors. show less

Ozick is a wonderful, lyrical writer, and I've greatly enjoyed some of her other books. But this one, though it was a vivid study of place, didn't make me love it. I couldn't connect with the characters; while I don't expect to necessarily like whoever I'm reading about (though it's always excellent when I care about them despite their massive flaws), I need to care about the consequences of what they are doing. And nothing in this book made me commit that much. Granted, I have not read the Ambassadors and that may be why.

One-sentence summary: Bea Nightingale, school teacher, becomes embroiled in lives of her niece, nephew, and brother when she's asked to fetch said nephew from Paris.

Did... I hate every character in this book and yet, still care about what happened?: YES. It's a little freaky, actually, how Ozick did that.

Did... I read this book in about 1.5 days?: YES, both because the pacing is pretty snappy and because it's a brief 272 pages!

Did... I want to move to Paris after reading this?: YES, although that's usually my default response.

Review: I've never ready Henry James' The Ambassadors, so I was a little apprehensive that Foreign Bodies would just go over my head. (I wiki'd James' book to find out the gist of the plot.) While the premise of show more Foreign Bodies is vaguely similar to The Ambassadors (a teacher sets out to retrieve wayward pupil from Paris), I don't think one needs to have read the latter to enjoy the former.

Rather than Henry James, I was strongly reminded of the books from the era Foreign Bodies is set, particularly Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Ozick's prose varies from concrete and certain to ethereal and scattered. The characters are all vaguely amoral and unappealing. The prose hardly plumbs anyone's motivation, not even Bea Nightingale, the heroine, which is my only complaint. Even though we're in Bea's head, swimming in her thoughts, something about the prose keeps the reader at arm's length; when the big a-ha moment came, I hardly felt the impact. show less