- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Plume Books; First Printing edition (April 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0452279453
- ISBN-13: 978-0452279452
- Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.7 x 2.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,763,682 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was thrilled to see this book back in print -- I'd lent out my copy years ago and despaired of ever having it again in my bookshelf. Diane Johnson is marvelously shrewd about people (you often want to strangle her characters for their obtuseness and selfishness even as you sympathize with them completely) and style (is there anyone after Forster who jumps more deftly among differing points of view?) but, alas, less clever about plotting. Many of her novels end with acts of violence that seem to me less like comments about society than attempts by an author to find some way of extricating herself from her own plot. I'd include the endings of both "Le Divorce" and "Persian Nights" here, and, in a different way, "The Shadow Knows." For my money "Lying Low" is the novel where Johnson best united her usual acute characterization and epigrammatic style with a surprising, yet wholly logical and satisfying plot.
The characters, most of them, live in a big Victorian house in a university town that I'll bet is modeled on Davis, California. The time is 1974-5, the noises from the '60s still echo in the air, and the central character, an elderly ex-dancer with mild bohemian tendencies, makes part of her living by renting out rooms in her family house. She lives with her brother, a sort of low-wattage Ansel Adams, and two boarders, a young Brazilian woman who is hiding from the INS and a somewhat older American woman who is hiding from the FBI. The novel takes place over five days and involves baby-sitting, Brazilian cooking, and many Mason jars full of high explosive. Good stuff.
The characters, most of them, live in a big Victorian house in a university town that I'll bet is modeled on Davis, California. The time is 1974-5, the noises from the '60s still echo in the air, and the central character, an elderly ex-dancer with mild bohemian tendencies, makes part of her living by renting out rooms in her family house. She lives with her brother, a sort of low-wattage Ansel Adams, and two boarders, a young Brazilian woman who is hiding from the INS and a somewhat older American woman who is hiding from the FBI. The novel takes place over five days and involves baby-sitting, Brazilian cooking, and many Mason jars full of high explosive. Good stuff.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful
One of her best
30 April 1998
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was thrilled to see this book back in print -- I'd lent out my copy years ago and despaired of ever having it again in my bookshelf. Diane Johnson is marvelously shrewd about people (you often want to strangle her characters for their obtuseness and selfishness even as you sympathize with them completely) and style (is there anyone after Forster who jumps more deftly among differing points of view?) but, alas, less clever about plotting. Many of her novels end with acts of violence that seem to me less like comments about society than attempts by an author to find some way of extricating herself from her own plot. I'd include the endings of both "Le Divorce" and "Persian Nights" here, and, in a different way, "The Shadow Knows." For my money "Lying Low" is the novel where Johnson best united her usual acute characterization and epigrammatic style with a surprising, yet wholly logical and satisfying plot.
The characters, most of them, live in a big Victorian house in a university town that I'll bet is modeled on Davis, California. The time is 1974-5, the noises from the '60s still echo in the air, and the central character, an elderly ex-dancer with mild bohemian tendencies, makes part of her living by renting out rooms in her family house. She lives with her brother, a sort of low-wattage Ansel Adams, and two boarders, a young Brazilian woman who is hiding from the INS and a somewhat older American woman who is hiding from the FBI. The novel takes place over five days and involves baby-sitting, Brazilian cooking, and many Mason jars full of high explosive. Good stuff.
The characters, most of them, live in a big Victorian house in a university town that I'll bet is modeled on Davis, California. The time is 1974-5, the noises from the '60s still echo in the air, and the central character, an elderly ex-dancer with mild bohemian tendencies, makes part of her living by renting out rooms in her family house. She lives with her brother, a sort of low-wattage Ansel Adams, and two boarders, a young Brazilian woman who is hiding from the INS and a somewhat older American woman who is hiding from the FBI. The novel takes place over five days and involves baby-sitting, Brazilian cooking, and many Mason jars full of high explosive. Good stuff.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
HEARTBREAKING AND INDELIBLE.
10 Nov 2001
Format:Paperback
A beautifully fractured tale, moored in anguish but told with compelling wit, eroticism, and consumate wonder.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Great characterization, meandering plot
27 Aug 2001
Format:Paperback
I'm a big fan of Diane Johnson's novels Le Divorce and Le Mariage for her lovely writing, dead-on characterizations and her observant articulation of the cultural differences between Americans and the French. She has the ability to create characters who are superficially a "type" (such as young American girl in Paris, superchic young Parisian woman, masculine American expatriate journalist, etc.) and make them extremely interesting by giving us a view to their inner thoughts. They never ring false. I was excited to read Lying Low for this reason. Lying Low is another example of her gift for characters, especially with the characters Marybeth/Lynn (the fugitive) and Theo. Other characters are Ouida, the Brazilian immigrant, and Anton, Theo's photographer brother. However, this book was also a bit disappointing in terms of plot. Those four aforementioned characters share a Victorian house in Orris, California, a small college town near Sacramento (read: Davis). Not a whole lot happens externally -- everything important seems to occur inside the characters' heads, and the ending is nothing to speak of -- a rather farfetched catastrophe (not coincidentally very similar to Le Divorce and to a lesser extent Le Mariage). Johnson appears to have first published it in the late 1970's. Perhaps she hadn't yet honed her storytelling abilities to the degree shown in her most recent novels. I liked it, but it wasn't wholly satisfying.
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