Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 15
 Slightly formulaic, but very readable December 28, 2006
Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom)
Worthy wife Jane falls out of love with her husband Alan who has become totally self-centred because of consistent terrible back pains (the descriptions of which throughout the novel are rather repetitive). She falls guiltily in love with Henry, while Alan falls for the Henry's narcissistic, manipulative but gorgeous wife Delia. It is a slightly formulaic campus novel, and for most of the book you think it is fairly predictable; you think you can guess how it will probably end, but ... well, see whether you have guessed right. It's not as good a book as Lurie's Foreign Affairs, with which I was much more involved, but, like all her other books, this one is written with effortless ease and slips down easily and pleasantly.
 Myth and Mischief in Academia December 23, 2006
Stephen Schwartz (Ithaca, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Truth and Consequences by Alison Lurie is a novel of academia. The setting is a thinly disguised Ithaca, Tompkins County, NY and Cornell University. Nevertheless this book is only marginally realistic. The characters are exaggerated, the academic descriptions simplistic, and the plot likewise. Lurie's descriptions are trite in the extreme and much of her writing is like a "crisis romance"-type paperback. The women (especially Jane) moan and sob, shiver with a thrill when their lovers touch them, and so on. Much of the dialogue is equally flat with lots of "yeah"s and similarly unacademic phrases. None of the characters seem particularly well-educated or very interested in academic pursuits. They are interested in themselves and their failing marriages and affairs, and middle-age health problems. In many superficial ways this is a typical trite "chick" book, as another reviewer mentioned.
Nevertheless I very much liked this book, and I am a guy. I should disclose that I live in Ithaca and attended Cornell. Many of the details of the setting are accurate--The Farmers' Market, the lake, the roads, the campus, and weather. Despite the flatness of the characters Lurie conjures some kind of magic and makes them come alive and in a way that made me care about them. I was not bored for a moment reading the book, and I bore easily with domestic romances. Somehow the author conjures out of the simplistic, trite, and flat contours a story and characters that are interesting and engaging. I found myself wrapped up in their marital and romantic intrigues. In some ways Lurie's writing reminds, perhaps, of Louis Auchincloss'. Simple, not realistic, but representative of social realities and with a kind of universal appeal that transcends mere storytelling. And Lurie manages to keep our interest without any descriptions of sloppy sex, violence, perversion, or insanity,unlike e.g. John Banville's Shroud which has all of those and fails dismally. See my review. The contrast could not be more stark than that between Banville's Shroud and Lurie's Truth and Consequences. Yet both are about the romantic intrigues of aging academics. Banville's failed and disgusting novel is everything Truth and Consequences is not. Truth and Consequences is all quite bland--really, nothing you couldn't read to your ten year old niece. How Lurie does it, I'm not quite sure, but she does.
 It's All Academic August 31, 2006
Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Considering that Alison Lurie is an award-winning novelist, I was surprised at the simplistic tone of this novel. As many reviewers have written, the beginning is quite promising; I was instantly captured by the first few paragraphs. Unfortunately, that interest was not sustained.
The dialogue is often stilted and totally unrealistic. And the gender-specific portrayals are downright annoying. All the men "smile" (I could not count how many times the author uses the words, "Henry smiled." All the women "wail" (as in: Jane wailed.) It was difficult for me to believe an administrator went through life "wailing". Delia, the femme fatale of the novel, is so "helpless and vulnerable" with her "huge gray eyes" (repeated ad nauseum) that it is hard for me to believe that she ever DID become a famous writer. She sounds like Marilyn Monroe!
None of the characters are overly developed. Jane and Henry -- the suffering caregivers -- are saintly and put-upon. Delia and Jane's husband are defined by their physical struggles and are totally unlikeable...with barely a redeeming characteristic, unless it's their talent and fame.
I'm an avid reader, and were it not for the fact that this was a short novel, I would have simply put it down. Not worth your time!
Sly Dig At Academia March 17, 2006
W. Kaplan (Wynnewood, PA United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Alison Lurie is a gifted, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author, widely known for "The War Between the Tates," which is only one of her brilliant novels.
"Truth and Consequences" is a good, well-written, easy-to-read character study of a small slice of academia in a small town; it is positively wicked in it's dead-on perceptions of different academic "types," from the ethereal, airy Visiting Fellow, Delia Delaney, to the quickly fracturing couple, architectural professor Alan Mackenzie and his wife Jane, Administrative Manager for the small college at which they all work. In a sly comedy of manners, Lurie examines what can happen when the scales tip just a bit: Alan's chronic back pain from an injury changes him from a sexy,loveable husband to a whining petulant child; Jane turns from a happy, contented wife in love with her husband to one who mistakes him for a stranger; and strange, toxic love is in the air everywhere.
This is a fun book, and I highly recommend it, without reservation.
 Ultimately a Folly January 4, 2006
Mary Lins (Houston, TX USA)
I love Alison Lurie, but this novel just missed the mark. I didn't care about ANY of the characters. Yes, they are all SUPPOSED to be insipid lying whiners...but I wanted to care just a little bit about what happened to them.
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