The Double Life of Alfred Buber
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Double Life of Alfred Buber is a memoir about an illicit love affair that one gradually begins to realize is rather different than the author confesses. Alfred Buber is a pillar of his community, a respected man with a secret, and a secret life, until one day the two cross over and even he can no longer tell which is real and which is not. Buber's passion for women is matched only by his inability to relate to them, and after years of bruising attempts to find love, he seeks escape in a illegitimate and all encompassing romance with a Bangkok bargirl. She may reciprocate. She may not. Buber's dilemma - to believe in her, and in what he is doing, or not, to continue a wholly respectable life that is bringing him no happiness, or not - is the premise of this truly unforgettable love story, and its equally unforgettable, completely flawed lovers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alfred Buber, the narrator of Schmahmann's (Empire Settings) second novel, is a man both prissy and sordid. He describes himself as portly, little, middle-aged, bald, with beady eyes, a big nose, and hairless legs. He's a partner in a stodgy Boston law firm and lives in the grand house he began building as a young lawyer. He's also old-fashioned, formal, dryly witty, and recognizes that his way of trying to fit into the world only serves to isolate him. His fetishistic attraction to Asian girls, which developed during his youth in Rhodesia, eventually leads him into a double life: he travels to Asia for sex with very young prostitutes. But at the Star of Love Bar, after watching public sexual encounters, then experiencing his own, matter-of-factly, as though "she were changing a bandage on my leg," Buber also experiences love, touched by the beautiful teenage girl, Nok, who he first sees paging a child's book, trying to learn English. Buber moves back and forth in time and place, to Boston, to Europe, to Bangkok, trying to figure out his life, wedded to both his personas, and as both his lives slowly unravel, he faces the consequence of his waffling. Schmahmann has captured desperation and love between unequals.
