Katherine's review

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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9998.The_Woman_in_the_Dunes?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Woman in the Dunes" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166112398m/9998.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9998.The_Woman_in_the_Dunes?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Woman in the Dunes</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6526.Kobo_Abe">Kobo Abe</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20340134?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 4 of 5 stars<br/>An arrogant entomologist accepts an invitation to stay in a strange village, and awakens to find himself trapped in an absurdist nightmare. Now confined in a sand pit with an enigmatic woman, he is forced to shovel sand to keep the village's economy from collapsing. Abe is a master at creating an overall mood of fear, tension and confinement - just witness all the claustrophobes who had to put the book down! <br/> <br/>One caveat - <u>Woman in the Dunes</u> goes to very uncomfortable places with sex, gender, and economy, and I was never certain how much Abe supports his male protagonist's attitude toward the woman: his tangle of fear and desire, his need to master or restrain her, his barely concealed disdain. <br/> <br/>Roger Ebert's review of the 1964 film has some interesting insights. <a target="_blank" href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980201/REVIEWS08/401010314/1023">http://rogerebert.suntimes.com...</a> <br/>I particularly enjoyed reading about the director's struggle to physically create the set, as he found it impossible to build an incline of more than 30 degrees. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/600126?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>