Knife Edge

This debut novel, written and set in West Germany, draws the line between man and woman, nurturing and violence, freedom and commitment--in terms of testosterone and estrogen. Iris is pregnant with Assen's child; she wants to have the baby, but he doesn't. When she puts his hands on her breast and stomach and points out that it would be natural to use these body parts to foster ? nurture? / a child, he raises his fists and asks whether it would be appropriate to use them to beat someone to death. Assen, a taxi driver and would-be novelist, dreams that he is to be shot and Iris ``carries her stomach like a kettledrum to the place of execution.'' Because Assen was beaten by his mother as a child, he fears intimacy and resents women. Though his thoughts and imagery are often violent, he is not a violent man, OK, though he raises his fists against wife in example given above?/he raises his fists in example above but nowhere do we say that he's doing so against his wife/pk so he ``imagines a murder that leaves the victim alive and free,'' wishing to be free of Iris without guilt or history. When he is called upon to commit an act of violence, of deserved revenge, he is impotent. Or does his failure signify a turning toward life? This is a solid first attempt, if somewhat predictable in its rendering of gender differences. (May)