A brilliant lost feminist classic that is equal parts domestic drama and international
intrigue.Shirley and Coenraad s affair has been going on for decades but her longing for him
is as desperate as ever. She is a Toronto housewife he works for an international organization
known only as the Agency. Their rendezvous take place in Tangier in Hong Kong in Rome and are
arranged by an intricate code based on notes slipped into issues of National Geographic. He
recognizes her by her costume: a respectable black dress and string of pearls his appearance
however is changeable. But something has happened the code has been discovered and Coenraad
sends Shirley (who prefers to be known as Lola Montez ) to Toronto the last place she wants to
go. There the trail leads her through the sites of her impoverished immigrant childhood and
sends her finally to her own house where she discards her pearls and trades in her basic
black for a dress of vibrant multicolored silk.Helen Weinzweig published her first novel when
she was fifty-eight. Basic Black with Pearls her second won the Toronto Book Award and has
since come to be recognized as a feminist landmark. Here Weinzweig imbues the formal
inventiveness of the nouveau roman with psychological poignancy and surprising humor to tell a
story of simultaneous dissolution and discovery.
