SOURCE: “Freud Terminable,” in New York Times Book Review, October 23, 1994, p. 28.

In the following review, Kincaid offers positive evaluation of Eating Pavlova.

In 1824 Sam Goldwyn, recognizing that “there is nothing really so entertaining as a really great love story,” set out to comb the world for the really greatest love story of them all. In pursuit of this majestic quest, he resolved to call on “the greatest love specialist in the world,” Sigmund Freud, and induce him to “commercialize his study and write a story for the screen.” Freud responded with a one-sentence letter: “I do not intend to see Mr. Goldwyn.”

Seventy years later, D. M. Thomas, who had employed Freud earlier in his novel The White Hotel (1981), has better luck, probably because the love story he wants Freud to write, and actually coaxes him into writing, is so much more harrowing, funny and kind than anything...