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DANCING NAKED AT THE EDGE OF DAWN
Kris Radish
Bantam, Jan 2005, $11.00, 329 pp.
ISBN: 0553382632
Perhaps it was caused by almost three decades of a lethargic marriage raising two great adult children that turned Meg Fratano into a watcher, but when the forty-eight year old suburbanite sees her spouse Bob naked with a bimbo, she just wanted to observe. She reflects that she should have wanted to kill them or at least confront them. Instead she finds it curious that Bob is on the bottom and the act seems a lot more intense than their two minute warning that infrequently occurs.

Meg ponders why voyeurism felt pretty good and concludes that she has lived the last quarter of a century plus living her family’s dreams, not hers. She begins a trek to first find her desires; she meets wise women on her journey to self awareness including her deceased Aunt Marcia, who left her a Mexican hideaway. Will Meg ever find her solace perhaps in Mexico, in the arms of a man besides cheating Bob or perhaps a foundation benefiting women?

Meg is an interesting protagonist struggling with a mid life crisis in which Bob’s infidelity serves as the catalyst that wakes up “Sleeping Beauty”. As she makes her romp through a world of fully developed females guides, Meg still needs to find where she fits. In spite of the importance of Bob causing the eye opening incident, he is never developed beyond seemingly a reasonably nice person who cheated, but the real motive for his wandering is never fully expanded upon so instead the audience sees a cut out male. Still DANCING NAKED AT THE EDGE OF DAWN is a fine look at middle age reflections on one’s life.

Harriet Klausner


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