Farzaneh has an imagination, which directs his hero towards a variety of young women encountered during a year in downtown Vancouver, where “all types of girls can be found on the street”. At the end of the novel, in conversation with a waitress, he confesses “I like insecure, moody, promiscuous ice princesses who like to backstab me”, and reflects to himself, “many faces, one woman.”
It’s fair to say that each of them leads him a merry dance, as does he with his reader. We wonder to what extent his adventures are autobiographical. More likely, I suspect, that they are embroidered shamelessly with added poetry and fantasy by a man of a certain age looking back fondly to his days before the bonds of a happy marriage, mortgage and children.
What kept me reading? Our narrator is endearingly baffled by the girls he pursues, or pursue him. He doesn’t always tell us what we want to know. Every page is a cliff-hanger, in fact.
I’d have preferred it if these girls were more distinguishable from one another, each of a different age, ethnicity, body-shape and life-challenges. This must say something about me, of course: what turns our author on is his own business.
Farzaneh’s style is sunny and full of mischief. No heart is seriously harmed, nobody has real problems. There’s a kind of innocence, as on the occasion where he goes on an expedition with a bunch of nudists, one of whom is the woman he’s trying to get back together with. While she’s away for a swim he finds another girl, lodging in the same chalet, in his bed giving him a brazen come-on. Unbelievable luck but he invents a string of excuses for saying no: he’s gay, a Mormon, saving his virginity for marriage etc. How will it all end? Which girl will he choose, or more likely choose him?
Such questions compelled me to turn every page till I reached its satisfying end, which teases us with the dangling promise of a sequel. Which I’m sure will be better, if it sees daylight. I doubt it though, for he’s putting his writing talent to more noble ends, saying recently: “I am currently working on a health / self-help book that should hopefully help others to deal with a variety of health issues and diseases.”
View all my reviews
Love Affairs: Tales of Love, Romance, and Sex by Arash Farzaneh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
a wayfarer’s notes 
Hello, Sam! You could be reviewing a box of those toothpicks with the plastic cellophane tips that they stick in sandwiches and I would be thrilled to hear from you. Wonderful!
“Many faces, one woman” didn’t the devil tell Jesus something like that in The Last Temptation of Christ.? A strange perspective to have. Disquieting. Dehumanizing one might say. Is there a point to thinking such a thing?
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Thanks, Bryan, you’ve inspired me to dash off another. Especially as Goodreads generated some link text which says “view all my reviews” and there aren’t any others from me, only stars. I’ll put up a piece about Knowledge of Angels in a while.
Yes, it’s in The Last Temptation of Christ, apparently several times. There’s a piece about it in medium.com. It’s a website implicitly promoting atheism and modern liberalism—certainly in that euphemistic word “relationships”. It’s not a place where monogamy is held as an ideal, or even praised. The author goes as far as to say “the devil is right.”
Blake in his Proverbs of Heaven and Hell has something to say about this idea, and it’s a theme pursued with great thoroughness, offering arguments on all sides, in Knowledge of Angels.
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Good morning from Florida,
Is this what you referred to in Marriage of Heaven and Hell?
“Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.”
You brought to my mind images from Blake of contrasting women who each represented to the male aspects of his psyche.
https://ramhornd.blogspot.com/2019/04/i-behold.html
One of the three Maries as identified by Matthew was the mother of James and Joses but I think that Blake had something else in mind. One that he pictured was the Mother of Jesus (the mother of his mortal part), one was the sister of his friend Lazarus who returned to mortal life from the grave, and one was Mary of Magdela who first recognized the risen Christ.
http://ramhornd.blogspot.com/2018/11/slavery-4.html
The picture of three women which Blake engraved for Stedman’s book has made this post popular on my blog. Blake was overtly using the women symbolically, as was Stedman, but he made them all appealing in distinctive ways.
Thanks as always for expanding my awareness.
ellie
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Ellie, you have expanded mine, and I was aware that in mentioning Proverbs of Heaven and Hell (I meant the Proverbs of Hell) that you would certainly have something to say.
Vague as the thought was, when I responded to Bryan, I’ve discovered an essay which represents rather closely what I would like to have said, as to where Blake stood; that in his earlier poems, up to and including “The Vision of the Daughters of Albion”, which I’ve never attempted to read, Blake’s attitude could be summed up as
The essay is here http://bq.blakearchive.org/16.3.ostriker
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I find a lot to disagree with in Ostriker’s essay. Symbolic poetry does not yield readily to rational analysis. I hope I don’t sound authoritative when I write about Blake. I know that we hear what we are capable of hearing and understand according to what is given to us.
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Well, I was rather disappointed to read near the end of your review that the author is putting his talents to ‘more noble ends.’ Let’s be honest (or me, at any rate): what is more fascinating and a better read? A novel about a man who likes meeting moody ice princesses, or a tome on health and self-help? And don’t we already have roughly fifty times too many of the latter?
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I’ve already magick’d away your second “already”. It’s a WordPress thing. I could edit anyone’s comment to say the exact opposite, turn every “maybe” into “yes please” like a wishful-thinking man on a date.
That’s not going to happen, though.
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I sometimes think that the urge to write self-help books is greater than any corresponding need of the reading public. But then, the same goes for novelists.
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The slush pile must be very high indeed. It is like climbing a mountain, getting to the top for a magnificent view, then spotting an enormous, inelegant plateau-like feature in the distance which appears on no Ordnance Survey map. ‘That’s the slush pile’ mutters the mountain guide helpfully. ‘It’s on its own tectonic plate: growing higher by the day.’
As for the ‘WordPress thing’, it has the potential to be scary. Thankfully we are in your trustworthy hands.
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