Title: Psychological exploration of 1950s relationships
Product review: This realist novel, completed in 1956 but not published until 1988, is an effective exploration of the psychological subtleties of a four-way relationship. Jim Briskin, a classical music radio announcer, still in love with his ex-wife Pat, introduces her to a teenage couple, Art and Rachael. Pat becomes involved with the violent and possessive Art. Meanwhile, in her curious, willful way, Rachael falls in love with Jim. The "broken bubble" of the title refers to a minor incident in which one Thisbe Holt rolls around naked inside a plastic bubble at a convention of optometrists, who end up filling it with junk and smashing it. The broken-bubble image is suggestive of the egoic bubbles that Jim, Pat, Art, and Rachael all float in, that separate them in their relationships. During the course of the novel these bubbles are broken.
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