Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
VERY ATMOSPHERIC...ELEGANTLY WRITTEN...BUT MISSES THE MARK, 9 Jan 2003
This is an intriguing novel about the murder of Dora, a young eighteen year old woman found dead in a park. The contents of her stomach at the time of death contained a half digested fig. She was also a patient of Dr. Freud. You see, her murder happened in Vienna, Austria in 1910.The case is assigned to a nameless inspector, who is trying to investigate this homicide according to certain principles set forth in a book of criminalistics written at the turn of the century. It is an intellectual and cerebral approach to a criminal investigation. It is also an interesting look at a turn of the century police procedural. Meanwhile, Dora's murder has captured the imagination of the inspector's independent, Hungarian born wife, Erzebet, who, unbeknownst to her husband, has begun her own parallel investigation based upon intuition and her own cultural proclivities. She is joined in her endeavor by her friend, a governess who is at loose ends while her employer is away. During the investigation, this elegantly written novel paints an atmospheric, three dimensional portrait of turn of the century Vienna, lush with details about everyday life. It is this part of the book that is the strongest and the most interesting, as it is highly evocative of a place and time gone by. The mystery itself, however, ends up not being much of a mystery, after all. In the final analysis, the promise of this highly ambitious novel remains unfulfilled, as the author simply bit off more than she could chew. The novel whets the appetite but, ultimately, fails to sate it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Heavy with atmosphere, light on narrative resolution, 28 Nov 2000
By A Customer
"The Fig Eater" opens with the discovery of the body of a young girl in a Viennese park. She is Dora (familiar to students of Freud as the subject of perhaps his most famous case study). An Inspector of police begins his investigation into her murder, using logic, forensics and all the tools of his long experience; meanwhile his wife Erzebet, an enigmatic Hungarian steeped in gypsy folklore, becomes obsessed with the girl and begins an investigation of her own, aided by a young English governess called, oddly, Wally. With such promising material (psychoanalysis, gypsy superstition, sexual tension, snow, repression, secrets, a murder), this book was an irresistible prospect. However, it ultimately proved to be less meaty than I'd hoped. Someone once said that they couldn't bear novels in which the author kept showing off how much research they'd done. It's a temptation that Jody Shields has not been able to resist. Set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, "The Fig Eater" is top heavy with detail: every cake in the cafes is precisely named, the trim of every cloak, the name of each paint colour into which Erzebet dips her brush: all elaborately and carefully set out. Shields must have spent hours walking the paths of the Stadtpark, noting the fall of the light at different seasons, at different times of day. All this detail certainly builds an evocative, sinister atmosphere, thick with superstition and striking images. Shields has a background in screenwriting, and it shows: time and again, scenes are set up: we're presented with a powerful tableau, a cinematic shot: a young girl in a darkened garden, confronted by a man with a silver nose; a woman moving through a room hung with white sheets; a silent museum filled with naked wax figures. The trouble is that all these scenes, striking as they are, don't really lead us anywhere. "The Fig Eater" is presented in the form of a murder mystery, yet the threads of the mystery are never satisfactorily tied together. The chief pleasure of the mystery story lies in its solution. Shields leads us through not one, but two complicated investigations of Dora's murder, but neither delivers that gratifying series of clicks when all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. In the end, I was left tantalized, even titillated, but ultimately unfulfilled.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not up to its billing, 18 Jun 2001
By A Customer
It is a puzzle, to me, that this book got favorable reviews. The reader's reports (here and elsewhere) give you the real story, which is that The Fig Eater is a disappointment.The story is well set up and intriguing. Then, about half way through, the pace flags and the detailed descriptions become tiresome. The truth is that the author seems to have no idea how to resolve the story. There is a hasty, botched ending, which suddenly offers an improbable solution to the murder mystery, and leaves all the clues unresolved.
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