Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 14, 1993 TAG: 9308140030
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by MARY ANN JOHNSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
Designer clothes, expensive perfumes, fine furs - such is the merchandize of Tarkington's, a Fifth Avenue department store established by an ex-con whose smooth style, acquired taste and shady cellmate carry him to international stature. He dies in a mysterious manner and, with this, Stephen Birmingham, author of "The Aurbach Will," begins his tale of glamour and intrigue.
A biographer is hired to write the true story of Si Tarkington, and revelations are made through his interviews with Si's ambitious daughter, his disinherited son, his beautiful but plastic wife, his young and too earnest mistress, the unexplained gray-haired woman in a brownstone, his spunky but forgotten mother in a Florida nursing home, his neurotic sister and the gay store manager who knows too much.
Birmingham's own short career in retailing gave him the incentive and material to write about "the perfumed jungle of department and speciality stores." Authenticity of scene is masked by the scent of artificiality which clings to the other elements of the novel.
Editing, both for unnecessary droning and for the consistent misuse of the pronoun "I" might have taken this book above the mezzanine level.
\ Mary Ann Johnson teaches at Roanoke College.
by CNB