Review of The Performance
By Bill Branyon
If you want sustained excitement of many kinds dialed up to a fever pitch for over three-hundred compelling pages, read Bennett Kremen’s new novel The Performance. He spins out artistic, religious, romantic, mafioso and journalistic tension in escalating, intriguing amounts that crashes towards a wondrous crescendo.
Having Kremen’s book beckoning from your night stand is like having a baseball size chunk of plutonium radiating power and adventure in your possession. Anyaskaya d’Borovik is a 2nd generation Russian dancer-choreographer in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village who has come up with a way to unite the world’s religious fervor in one elegant evening. Unfortunately, it also excites religious bigots who see their Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish bailiwicks threatened by such an audacious synthesis.
As Anya progresses in her conception, she angers one of New York’s premier financiers after a night of romance turns sour. This attracts Sonny, a mobster who saves her from the financier, but interposes himself as her irrepressible suitor. The romance of the two spans many of New York’s most romantic locations, restaurants, and time slots as they sail, drink, and rhapsodize to delectable love. Sonny’s earthy charm eventually conquers Any’s heart, but her journalistic friend Evan informs her of encroaching threats from other mobsters and the cops.
Meanwhile rehearsal for the performance goes on as Anya desperately looks for financing which includes glamorous parties of the New York’s literati, producers, philanthropists and high-class inebriates. Her fellow dancers are caught up in the excitement of Anya’s vision but rehearsals are constantly interrupted by her romance and other concerns.
I won’t continue to reveal the plot for fear of spoiler alerts, but suffice it to say the book escalates to a fascinating climax that makes it impossible to put down. To call it a page turner is to call the Con Edison power grid an Eveready battery. The reader becomes enthralled with about five possibilities of what could happen, but what does happen is still unexpected and satisfying.
Buy the book and guarantee yourself several weeks of transcendence far beyond the mundane. Unless you can’t escape the book’s hypnotic power and read it in one explosive siting.
Bill Branyon
Author of the sci fi classic: Billy Graham Does Heaven, the philosophy-political blockbuster Liberating Liberalsand the romantic revelation Advanced Romance. See free excerpts from all these books and more at the websitewww.BranyonsUltimateFreethinking.com
