Looking For Mr. Goodbar: Judith Rossner: Simon and Schuster: $7.95: 217 pages.
It's a long road home, but a much longer road when you don't know where or what home is. Home could be a dull and boring existence as a teacher where you act a part to satisfy learning minds. It could be a bar called Mr. Goodbar where laughter, music and possible interlude await. Or it could be the arms of a swarthy young Italian where desire runs wild and passion rules.
Looking For Mr. Goodbar is the story of Theresa Dunn's existence: her life, her search, her death. You move with her through the pages and bars of her life and find a likable character. One, perhaps, who you would love to counsel and guide in order to help her find a happy resting place. You like her while at the same time disliking her for the paths and methods she uses in looking for her home. For example, there was James, a shy, staid Irish lawyer, who not-so-teasingly asked Theresa to marry him. Theresa was angered and upset, but she ended up seducing him in the back of a van.
Theresa's search leads her to Eli-Ali, a Jewish stranger in the night who needs a new life; Tony, primitive sex in a confused young man; and Gary, in whose arms she ends her search.
Judith Rossner has conveyed a story of lust, love, fear and sadness. Her style is wewll done and involves you thoroughly in the life of a girl who you know will die, but you read on, unable to stop her untimely demise but unable to ignore it.
Looking For Mr. Goodbar is one of the selections of the Doubleday Book Club and we can expect another popular film from this bestseller. Expect a PG, if not an R, rating. The book itself should be rated R, if such ratings were given books. But they aren't, so parents take heed. Fortunately, the graphic sexual detail is used to develop the scene and fits in with the whole picture of feelings and broodings. None could call this work of superb fiction "dirty."
Ms. Rossner has a hit with this one. She so courageously puts her point over to the reader you may wonder at times if she didn't scare herself while writing. She entertains as well as teaches.