Cynthia Ozick is one of America's literary treasures. For her sixth novel, she set herself a brilliant challenge: to retell the story of Henry Jame...
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Jan 01, 2011
Cynthia
rated it: 
Ozick's writing is lovely. Its subject and many of its sentiments are ugly. I know it’s often considered acceptable to lambast your own when you’re alone together but in 1950’s France and, let’s face it, even now, it was too soon to denigrate Jews who’d lost everyone and everything they’d loved just because they were so broken. In Ozick’s book the sleights are almost uglier because they’re coming from a second generation immigrant who’s acting on his sense of shame from coming from what he c
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Jan 11, 2012
John
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"Foreign Bodies", Cynthia Ozick's latest novel, is a brilliant twist on Henry James's "The Ambassadors". Set nearly three-quarters of century after James's novel, immediately after World War II, "Foreign Bodies" can be seen as the former's mirror image. However, that would be a most simplistic - if not derivative - means of describing it, especially when Ozick has created one of the most memorable characters I have encountered in recent contemporary fiction; Bea Nig
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Jun 09, 2011
Linda
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Many critics slaved over the comparison of Foreign Bodies to Henry James The Ambassadors. It's been so long since I've read Ambassadors that it did not affect my experience with this novel. Instead all my attention focused on the ordinary yet intriguing characters of Bea, Lilly and Iris (not Julian or Marvin, as much). I marvel at the imagination, insight and skill of a writer who can spin together just the right threads to create the whole cloth character that seems a living, breathing hum
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Feb 21, 2011
Paul
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I really wanted to love this book. Cynthia Ozick is an incredibly gifted writer, and Henry James' "The Ambassadors," the explicit inspiration for this book, is one of my all-time favorite novels. Yet despite some beautifully-written passages, it doesn't come off. At times, especially when the main character's blustering brother Marvin appears (mostly through a series of imperious letters), "Foreign Bodies" reads almost like a spoof or parody of "The Ambassadors," wh
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Feb 12, 2011
Fred
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Cynthia Ozick is one of our best writers and her newest book pays homage to Henry James, that enduringly subtle American master of the nuance. It tells the story of a brother and sister, Bea and Marvin, who have little use for one another, yet use one another mercilessly. Marvin's son and daughter (Julian and Iris) have gone off to Europe (Paris of course) without their father's permission and Marvin asks (tells is probably more accurate) his sister to go after them, urge them to return and repo
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Nov 23, 2010
Allyson
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She is really a wonderful writer with a unique presentation and style. However I did not rate this higher as I liked none of the characters, not at all or even a little bit. They all had significant flaws and I found the reading experience unpleasant as they were just all so annoying. I did not care really what happened to any of them although I was curious enough to finish the rather short book and had hopes that they would change a little or something other than what they were throughout.
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Sep 29, 2010
Audra (Unabridged Chick)
rated it:
One-sentence summary: Bea Nightingale, school teacher, becomes embroiled in lives of her niece, nephew, and brother when she's asked to fetch said nephew from Paris.
Did... I hate every character in this book and yet, still care about what happened?: YES. It's a little freaky, actually, how Ozick did that.
Did... I read this book in about 1.5 days?: YES, both because the pacing is pretty snappy and because it's a brief 272 pages!
Did... I want to move to Par More...
Did... I hate every character in this book and yet, still care about what happened?: YES. It's a little freaky, actually, how Ozick did that.
Did... I read this book in about 1.5 days?: YES, both because the pacing is pretty snappy and because it's a brief 272 pages!
Did... I want to move to Par More...
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Mar 24, 2011
Leigh
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If you like Henry James, you'll probably like this book, although it's slightly jumpier than, say, The Wings of the Dove. Ozick loves delving into her characters' minds and she does so beautifully, just like James, with surprising and real and unexpected results. That's all good. And I do like novels set in Europe shortly after World War II.
But the main problem (for me) was that I didn't like any of these characters: the spinsterish Bea who can't seem to tell her brother and ex-hus More...
But the main problem (for me) was that I didn't like any of these characters: the spinsterish Bea who can't seem to tell her brother and ex-hus More...
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Dec 09, 2010
Bookmarks Magazine
rated it:
Whether or not critics embraced Foreign Bodies depended, in part, on whether they were familiar with Henry James's The Ambassadors, on which Ozick's novel is loosely modeled as a counterpoint. A few praised the novel as worthy of James; others, however, called the novel too schematic and thought that Ozick abused James's novel of manners "to deliver the maximum shock and insult" (Denver Post). The Los Angeles Times perhaps summed up the problem. The novel "doesn't quite know what
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Mar 08, 2011
Mike
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Ozick seems like one of those writers you hear described as a novelist's novelist, an author whose work is best appreciated by others who've practiced the craft. Given that I've sort of written a novel -- qualifying only by the barest technicality -- I guess it's unsurprising that I just liked this one OK. Having never read the Ambassadors, upon which this book riffs (I like James' prose for a ghost story, but for straight fiction it leaves me a bit cold), I could be missing great iceberg-invi
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Nov 26, 2010
Paula
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Another book I wanted to like but was disappointed. It is supposedly The Ambassadors in reverse. Bea Nightingale is asked by her perfectly awful brother to retrieve his son from the clutches of Paris. The Paris of the summer of 1952 must have been Paris at her worst. This is no Strether Lambert beguiled by the mysteries of that lovely city, instead we have poor Bea dragging around in a pea soup of heat. Bea has also been dragging around the remnants of a marriage in the form of a grand piano he
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Dec 25, 2010
Margaret
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I've never read Henry James' "The Ambassadors," but Cynthia Ozick describes this book as a negative image of it. In 1952, Bea Nightingale, long ago divorced and teaching in an alternative high school in New York, is unexpectedly contacted by her estranged brother Marvin, who wants her to go to Paris to convince his son Julian to return to the United States. Bea goes to Paris to find Julian married to Lili, a displaced person, several years older than he. Bea assumes Lili is after Ju
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Oct 07, 2011
This is a good book, crafted by a humane artist. The story of Julian and Lilli is essentially at the heart of the book but the main character is the briefly-married, currently divorced Bea Nightingale (nee Nachtigal). Ozick's novel draws some of its structure from James' 'The Ambassadors' but Bea is easily one of the most disastrous emissaries imaginable. With good intentions, she manipulates the intelligence and trust that others put in her but the result is inevitably sorrowful. Of Leo (her fi
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Dec 13, 2010
Beth
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I read this because it was supposed to be a shadow of Henry James' The Ambassadors --- updated to the 50s and with gender reversals. Unfortunately, I found all the characters massively irritating --- Bea (in the Lambert Streather role) is sent to Pairs by her incredibly obnoxious brother to rescue Julian who is the brother's son. Bea (like Streather) has her life changed by the journey (oh yawn). Why Bea didn't flip her brother the bird and tell him to do his own dirty work is an example of t
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Jan 02, 2011
Vicky
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This is the first of Ozick's books I have read (she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Man/Booker Prize. This book "retraces the story of Henry James's The Ambassadors, which I admit I have not read. She is certainly a beautiful writer, but the story just didn't capture me (maybe after I read the Ambassadors).I heard a review of this on KUER Radio West's 2010 Holiday Booskshow and it was considered one of the year's best. If you want some other interesting and out of the mains
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Oct 25, 2010
Linda
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I find Ozick different and fascinating. She describes 1952 Paris."They were mostly young AMericans in their twenties who called themselves expatriates, besottd with legends of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. THey gathered in the cfes to gossip and slander and savor the old tales of the lost generation. They rotated lovers of either sex and played at existentialism and founded avant-garde journals inwhich they published one another and bragged of having sighted Sartre at the Deux Magots....
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Nov 27, 2011
Chanpheng
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I've like Cynthia Ozick's other books, and looked forward to reading this, but I felt disappointment with her latest book. I don't think any of the characters were sympathetic, and the whole feeling was so down and negative. Even at the end, I don't know if any of the characters have grown or changed.
The most intriguing character was Lily, a displaced person from Romania, but the one most consumed with guilt with her humanity. Everyone else was filled with spite, blind with the feelin More...
The most intriguing character was Lily, a displaced person from Romania, but the one most consumed with guilt with her humanity. Everyone else was filled with spite, blind with the feelin More...
Mar 27, 2011
Judith
rated it:
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick evokes Henry James' The Ambassadors. In the role of the middle-aged New England Protestant Louis Lambert Strether of 1903, is the long-divorced Jewish American school teacher, Beatrice Nachtigall, now Miss Nightingale in 1952. The boy who has attached himself to an older woman in Paris is her nephew, Julian, and the juxtaposition of American innocence and European experience is made flesh in the person of Lili, an underfed Romanian widow displaced by World War II.
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Jan 11, 2011
Katherine
rated it:
“Her guidebook showed no concern for the tourist’s bladder…” (5).
“It was comical and it was awful. Suicide, charlatanism, vegetables” (63).
“These coddled Californians, with no inkling of endurance. They had lived without winter” (77).
“…rose-mobbed trellises…” (87).
“But the Margaret who stood before Bea now was all flicker and twitch, an engine pumping mechanical civilities” (89).
“He was pacing before one of the tall front windows, tall enough to serve a cathedral. I More...
“It was comical and it was awful. Suicide, charlatanism, vegetables” (63).
“These coddled Californians, with no inkling of endurance. They had lived without winter” (77).
“…rose-mobbed trellises…” (87).
“But the Margaret who stood before Bea now was all flicker and twitch, an engine pumping mechanical civilities” (89).
“He was pacing before one of the tall front windows, tall enough to serve a cathedral. I More...
Feb 21, 2011
Laura
rated it:
Reviewers make much of Ozick's love of Henry James and this novel's reflection of his "The Ambassadors." But you don't have to be familiar with that one to thoroughly enjoy this one. In 1952, Bea, a divorced middle-aged woman is sent to Paris by her (mostly estranged) brother to retrieve his bohemian son. She finds a Europe devastated by the war and overrun with refugees. Her interference and lies of omission do not make for a happy resolution. Ozick's writing is superb and she is a g
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Dec 22, 2010
Danielle
rated it: 
Disappointing, especially for Ozick. Maybe I can never replicate the emotional experience of "The Shawl." (Then again, do I want to?) I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, including, most damningly, the main one, a school teacher whose personal revolution/revelation is brought on by the archetypal trip to France. This was a novella, fleshed out and drawn out, and I for one am going to go back and see what james did in the Ambassadors, upon which it is supposedly
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Jul 04, 2011
K2
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Read a favorable review of the book, had never read Ozick, and was NOT impressed. I completed it as I kept thinking I must have been missing something that was going to turn it around. I found the book to be wholly unsatisfactory and am puzzled by all the three, four and five star reviews here. I didn't find any of the characters to be believable or fleshed out enough to relate to. Disappointing indeed on a long weekend I could have been reading other things I had standing by.
Jan 05, 2011
Jed
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Don't waste your time. The protagonist is maddeningly passive, blowing from NYC to Paris to California, whichever way the wind blows, interfering in others' lives in a pitiful attempt to fill the hole inside herself. Gave it 2, rather than 1, star because some of the characters (other than the protagonist) are mildly interesting. Some reviewer compared this favorably to H. James' "The Ambassadors" (which, as I recall, was why I put it on my To Read list). That's a joke.
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Jan 17, 2011
Kate
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Eccentric, insightful, beautifully written, angry, or filled with angry characters, and oddly the angriest characters were those who enjoyed the most "success" in mid-twentieth century America. The most sympathetic characters had the least control over their destiny. And, of course, there's a teacher in the story, and teaching is portrayed as a dead-end activity, one that doesn't fulfill any of the potential of a human being for art or spirit or connection.
Sep 11, 2011
Ilya
rated it:
Cynthia Ozick is an awesome wordsmith:
"the road was clogged with cars, those squat little domes, and not a taxi among them."
"pigeons flapped at their feet, pecking at the litter of peels and crusts, hopping fearlessly: not even the drink stamp of a shoe could frighten them into flight."
"A rustle of papers; a lap was switched off; the woman stepped out; Bea sprang. 'Lili,' she called."
But the story wasn't too exciting, and did
"the road was clogged with cars, those squat little domes, and not a taxi among them."
"pigeons flapped at their feet, pecking at the litter of peels and crusts, hopping fearlessly: not even the drink stamp of a shoe could frighten them into flight."
"A rustle of papers; a lap was switched off; the woman stepped out; Bea sprang. 'Lili,' she called."
But the story wasn't too exciting, and did
Dec 21, 2010
Thomas
rated it:
Pacing of this book is quite good, although I do feel the first 2/3 are much stronger than the finish. The language is beautiful--Ozick is a master. I wasn't particularly fond of any of the characters, especially by the end. In fact, I found it hard to pinpoint why Bea (the main character) did what she did? I suppose she might not have known completely herself, but there is a movement towards the end that tries to wrap up Bea's motives (I still felt a little bit in the dark).
May 19, 2011
Fredsky
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I adore this book! Ozick wrote it with such a sly wit, all the characters were just right, and I felt so warm whenever I picked it up. I couldn't wait to finish it, but I had to wait so I could savor it. A great book. It is a mirror image of The Ambassadors, by Henry James, at least according to the cover(?) or a review I read. Without telling the plot further, I have to say it's very funny. READ IT!
Mar 13, 2011
Katharine
rated it:
As much as I find The Ambassadors kind of ridiculous, I found myself comparing Ozick's riff on the plotline very unfavorably to it. Personal taste, I'm sure. But there's so much charm in the James version of the story, and this is a version that seems determined to be as charmless as possible.
Jan 14, 2011
Meghan
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I was really excited by the concept of this book a few chapters into it, but I COULD NOT get past the level of description in some parts. I am surprised by the difference in the author's tone, and felt like more than one person had written this book. I liked the simple narrative, and the appeal of the initial story line much more than the drawn out, exhausting descriptions.
Dec 21, 2011
Susie
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I just didn't like this book. I have not read The Ambassadors, upon which it is based, so I couldn't tell if her flowery, stylized writing was meant to be like Henry James'. Whatever the reason, I found her writing style very unpalatable, and, ultimately, it made the characters and the plot unbelievable. The characters were unsympathetic and uninteresting, and the story made little sense. I'm still curious about The Ambassadors, however.
