This small book contains multitudes. It fits to the hand like one of those knobbed hoops that do concise duty for the rosary, each knob giving the mind pause to open up to vistas of meditation on mysteries and passions; in the compass of a scant 135 pages it provokes, inspires and illuminates more profoundly than many a bulky volume, and confronts the great subjects - death, illness, reason and unreason, family strife and family bonds, friendship and betrayal, today's political abdication and philosophical cowardice, the limits of feminism, of happiness - and it delivers what its title promises, a new allegory about love.

LRB 6 April 1995 | PDF Download