Intimate Terms

Gordon achieves superficial, soap opera-style titillation rather than sophisticated drama in this saga of an orphaned teenager who unexpectedly rises to wealth and prominence. In 1937, after 17-year-old Dolph Robicheck's parents die in an accident, he goes to live with his only relative, a Cambridge University professor. Feeling the burden of his heritage, he soon heads for Shanghai to join a relief committee aiding Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany. There, he meets Salah Shawak, a philanthropist renowned as a connoisseur, businessman and ``patriarch of the Jewish community.'' Salah hires the impressionable young man as his assistant, teaches him about finance and introduces him to Ohna, an exquisite courtesan. In the '60s, Dolph establishes himself in London as an affluent, widely respected financier.The dying Salah shocks Dolph by asking him to marry Alahna, his and Ohna's teenaged daughter. Dolph acquiesces and grows to love the girl, but because he is sterile, he demands that Alahna conceive a child with one of the world's most outstanding men. The offbeat plot may sustain reader interest, but character delineation and most other details are sacrificed to descriptions of sexual encounters and the good life. (June)