Life on This Planet, and Other Stories - Hardcover

The eight short stories in this collection by the author of The Spanish Doctor are set mainly in Europe and Canada and explore the various ways in which people grapple with spiritual crises, physical deterioration, or romantic turmoil. In "Life on This Planet," a journalist witnesses an erratic love affair between his friend Heinrich Brandt, a dissolute pianist, and a French actress determined to "rehabilitate" him by rendering him sedate and monogamous. Conversely, a physician prescribes excitement for the listless maestro of "At the Empress Hotel." He obediently becomes involved with a volatile film star whose unpredictability revitalizes him. In another story, loneliness induces aging Dr. Tomas Benares to seek comfort by bedding his sons's sensuous widow, whose sudden departure leaves him even more bereft. Fraternal bonds are depicted in "A Love for the Infinite," in which a man unhinged by his brother's suicide takes hallucinogenic drugs to facilitate a meeting with the dead man's spirit. Cohen presents intriguing characters and situations, but his ambiguous, sometimes surrealistic style is more confusing than effective. December 23
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These two collections present a study in contrast. In Slow Exposures , Wheatcroft deals with characters that have lost, been maimed, survive at the edge of life. A grotesque cripple is killed. A man is forced to admit that he has sold out. Matt Cohen's collection (originally published in Canada as Cafe Ledog ), portrays people who are not more successful but who do take risks, gamble on life, do not stand at the edges. Most of the characters are Canadian. In "Golden Whore of the Heartland" a Toronto University teacher, who has built a farm where he lives with his second wife, falls in love with a visiting American professor. His life, like that of many of Cohen's characters, is out of control, but he battles and tries to come to terms with it. Both collections are accessible, each is revealing and rewarding in its own way. Marcia Tager, Tenafly, N.J.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.