When wealthy, middle-aged Estelle Wolfe attempts to seduce her husband on their 20th wedding anniversary, the effort fails. She unbuttons his shirt; he loses his balance and grabs her hair to keep from falling. She kisses him abruptly; he kicks over one of the candles that she has placed beside the bed and burns himself stomping out the flame with bare feet. "No harm done," she says, stretching out beside him.
But harm has been done, though Estelle is unable to see it. "On the Way to the Venus de Milo," a first novel by Pearson Marx, is about the many things people do not see.
The book begins in the past, when Estelle and Harry are married, and then moves to the present, as a widowed Estelle meets and is courted by Dr. Count Francesco von Cockleburg. As the story unfolds, the action flashes back and forth in time and place, with the author making quirky juxtapositions.
For example, Lisanne, the unmarried daughter, remembers her father saying, "Be thankful you're not a great beauty. . . . To be a great beauty is a disappointment." Then someone says, "It's pretty damn fishy, if you ask me," as the action flashes forward to a conversation between Ellen, the older married daughter, and her husband.
Putting the two ideas together can be humorous, but it's also confusing. You wonder what's fishy. Is it being a great beauty? Or is it the father's words? The first 10 or so pages are hard to follow, until you see the pattern. But even then, there are many places where you have to get your bearings.
After Estelle is widowed, Ellen and Donald become convinced that Estelle is not able to manage her affairs. She is overly generous with her money, and she is obsessive about dogs, adopting one a year. She collects 12 dogs.
Donald is outraged at the thought of 12 dogs. He's constantly outraged, outrage often provoked by what he sees as Estelle's naivete. When he's outraged, his buttocks quiver. After a while, his tirades seem tiresome and his buttocks boring.
Cockleburg and his dog (a Shih Tzu, named The Queen) set Donald off like a match to gasoline. "You know I could have predicted this . . . the minute your father died," Donald says, " . . C some gigolo would slide up to your mother on a trail of his own mousse and flatter her out of a fortune."
Cockleburg is a poet, a scholar, and a linguist. He uses words that most of the characters do not understand and speaks in a florid manner: " 'Depravity,' he said, 'depravity for which, alas, I was not on the qui vive.' He paused heavily, then went on, 'Ah, the cloacal city. I am not used to its ways.' "
But it's not Cockleburg's vocabulary that causes the problems. It's money. Everyone (including, apparently, Cockleburg) wants Estelle's money. The climax of this comedy of manners explains who gets it.
Along the way, there is misunderstanding, mistaken identity and wit. Sometimes the wit seems dumb, as in the scene in which Cockleburg falls, gasping for breath. "Mr. Cockleburg," Estelle says. "Doctor," he gasps. Estelle wonders whether Cockleburg wants a doctor, and she is told that he wants to be called by his academic title.
But generally, the humor works nicely. One of the more absurd scenes occurs as Estelle revises the romance novel that she and Cockleburg have written: "a truly monumental task, for as written, the 450 page manuscript had not a single period, comma, or colon. It had become impossible to concentrate, the dogs all around her having abandoned themselves to a final burst of play before bed." In a sense, this novel is that burst of play.
Ms. Scharper teaches writing at Towson State University. She is the author of "The Laughing Ladies," a collection of poetry.
BOOK REVIEW
Title: "On the Way to the Venus de Milo"
Author: Pearson Marx
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Length, price: 270 pages, $21