Unpredictable Combinations

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Tia Doré is actually a middle-class Montrealer named Dora Evangelista.
Her first novel follows abused wife/lottery winner Martha Kowalski and
her lawyer/lover Marion Lloyd, as they use her windfall to change their
lives.

This story is aptly titled, because the author combines the
sentimentality of a television writer with a pornographer’s instincts.
Martha, the working-class waitress who endures life with abusive
layabout Hank, is the type of protagonist who is featured in films that
run on W, the female-oriented cable network. The frequent sex scenes are
explicit and ridiculous enough to qualify as “adult entertainment.”

Although the author offers precise descriptions of characters’ body
odours and functions, she is vague about settings. The tropical paradise
that Martha and Marion escape to is never named. The fact that the
protagonist’s home province is not identified either contributes to
the sense of rootlessness that pervades this vapid, if raunchy, soap
opera.