Fabrications

"Fabrications" is a spritely love story that in its odd way recapitulates Henry James's The Wings of the Dove. A young man and a young woman are in love but don't have the financial resources they know they will need not just to be comfortable but to avoid the resentment either one would feel about having made a great sacrifice for their lives together. In James's story, Merton Densher married a wealthy young woman at death's door so he can inherit the money he needs in order to marry Kate Croy. Here, it is Nadine, the starlet, who marries the elderly producer with heart troubles, so that she and Abner, the writer, can look forward to a life of comfort and ease. Slavitt notices what James didn't, or couldn't in 1902-that the situation is inherently comic. And he has written a novel that is sprightlier than its model but, because of its humor, closer to the texture of life.