Culture Watch

And Consider This

by Eileen Frost

The Fig Eater
by Jody Shields
Little Brown/Back Bay Books
c2000 (paper)

A police inspector crouches over the body of a young woman, found in a snowy park in Vienna in the year 1910.

So begins his attempt to assemble the facts and patterns which will solve a murder. The inspector's Bible is a new encyclopedia of criminology, published in 1901, which advocates a psychological approach to sleuthing. He listens and observes carefully, trying always to keep his own personality from affecting his objectivity, much like the methods advocated by Freud in the new psychoanalysis.

The inspector's artist wife, Erzebet, by contrast, is an intuitive, sensuous Hungarian. She comes across the case file at home, reads it, and undertakes to solve the murder herself. But her methods come from the Gypsy lore she grew up with and involve interpreting dreams, spells, the weather-everything her scientific husband shuns.

The atmosphere in this intriguing first novel is eerie, bizarre, and elegant, bringing us inside the Vienna of the Habsburgs just before the First World War. So intriguing is the puzzle, wrapped around mysterious figs from an unknown tree, that it is hard to put this novel down.

Jody Shields is the former design editor of the New York Times Magazine. She is the author of two nonfiction fashion books, All That Glitters and Hats: A Stylish History. She has a master's degree in art. Her prints are in various collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

Daughter of an army surgeon, Eileen Frost grew up in libraries on military bases from coast to coast and beyond. A Senate staff member for five years after college, she spent many rewarding hours in the Library of Congress. She then spent a year in Europe, and after an interlude enjoying her small children, Eileen ran a catering business, became a librarian, and has worked at an independent school in North Carolina since 1984. She joined SeniorWomenWeb as a reviewer in 2001.

Ms. Frost has two daughters, both avid readers. For questions, comments and suggestions, email Eileen Frost.

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