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Best Review of a Nobel-Prizewinner’s Book EVAH!

Amazon’s page for Nobel Literature Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek’s book Women as Lovers contains the following magnificent Publishers Weekly review:

This brief, pitiless novel advances such a narrow, bleak vision of the human race that one wonders why its author, who apparently finds everything pointless, saw the point in writing it. In oddly punctuated, repetitive prose reminiscent of Gertrude Stein's but lacking Stein's energetic compassion, Jelinek's (Lust and The Piano Teacher) latest doesn't have much good to say about love or marriage or sex or babies. And for Paula and Brigette, these are the only escapes from a life--if one can call it a life--of sewing bras in a factory in the mountains of Austria. It's hard to imagine even the pretense of love in a marriage to a drunken lout like Erich, the rotting apple of his sad, miserable parents' eye, or to fat and stupid Heinz. What shallow, covetous creatures women are, is what Jelinek seems to say. It doesn't matter if they don't enjoy sex; they don't deserve it, and anyway, someday we'll all be dead.

I can’t believe I’m the only person who’d never heard of Jelinek, so I’m sure there are lots of folks rapidly catching up on her by checking out Amazon’s listings. Not the best impression (though possibly faithful).