Reviews for Fountains of Neptune

The average rating for Fountains of Neptune based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-20 00:00:00 Sarah A Fagan First a note for pop music lovers: the female author of this book, Rikki Ducornet, is the Rikki of the Steely Dan song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." Details from Wikipedia at the end of this review. This book is very much a psychological novel focused on the quirks of memory and filled with brilliant literary writing, imagination, storytelling, myth and fantasy. It's dream-like. The story starts with an eight-year-old boy growing up in seaport town in France. Even though he is that age, the man who acts as his father takes him to seedy waterfront cafes. He grows up hearing fantastic tales from fascinating drunken characters who tell him seafaring adventures about mermaids, monsters and ogres. He has vague memories of his real mother and real father who drowned when he was about three years old. It's horse-and-buggy days. Still eight years old, he almost drowns in a swimming accident. After this incident his memories flood back to him of the violent way his parents died - they were murdered - and he lapses into a coma that lasts 50 years. (I'm not giving away plot, this is in the blurbs on the book cover.) "My sleep began in the spring of 1914. I slept through both World Wars and the tainted calm between. It was as if I had been cursed by an evil fairy, pricked by an enchanted spinning wheel; an impenetrable briar had gripped my mind." While in a coma, he is under the care of a woman psychoanalyst, a protégée of Freud. She lives in a dilapidated rambling mansion that acts as a hospital and health spa. By chance, he survived a Nazi squad who came in and killed all the other patients. When he awakens, the psychoanalyst, now 80 years old, having cared for him for 50 years, loves him as her son. Of course he still has the mind of an eight-year old and is initially so physically weak that he is in a wheelchair. In the rambling rooms he builds a fantasy world out of paper mâché, telling the psychoanalyst that he is getting back into "reality." "Is this God's dilemma, I wonder, to have created a world he cannot participate in because it is too small for his aspirations?" She tries to make him face his horrible memories and writes a best-selling book about him. He's known as "The Sandman." For part of the story, while she is lecturing in the USA, they share their thoughts in letters, so we get to see the inner workings of his mind. A brief example of the lyrical style of writing: "This was my stage and these my props: an obelisk lost among the trees; a staircase carved of shadow; the worn marble of abandoned floors soaking up a landscape reflected in windows desperately in need of washing. An empty cabinet smelling faintly of cordials. An attic as vast as a cathedral. The hot cubbyholes of chambermaids. Balconies green with wind-sewn weeds, their rotting balustrades. Overgrown topiaries battling above the quiet pool where I saw my own reflection as beaked as any heron's." The author (b. 1943) has written a half-dozen novels and is probably best known for the one titled Netsuke. She was born in the US but lived in France for about 20 years and then returned to the US as a professor at various universities. Here's the pop music story from Wikipedia I mentioned at the start of the review. Rikki Ducornet is the Rikki of the Steely Dan song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." Steely Dan singer Donald Fagen had met her while both were attending Bard College. Ducornet says they met at a college party, and even though she was both pregnant and married at the time, he gave her his number. Ducornet was intrigued by Fagen and was tempted to call him, but she decided against it. Top photo of a Paris cafe in 1900 from alamy.com Watercolor of La Rochelle by Paul Signac from 1stdibs.com The author from shelf-awareness.com

Review # 2 was written on 2016-09-12 00:00:00 Harry Imdo The Fountains Of Neptune experience for me is a brackish filled fountain in and of itself. Generously constructed by Ms.Ducornet as she draws upon the fresh and salt water expression. Channeling a fresh water river of refined language used to convey contemplations and dreams. Then brazenly she summons a salt water tide. The raffish dialogue of those that solicit the sea. Submerge yerself within this fountain, I say. Abandon yer rags and liberate yer thoughts, seek the waters fer a true reflection... How much of it will you remember? Will you too dream of the rapturous sea, Toujours-La and Odille.