SOURCE: "Passionate Spring," in San Francisco Review of Books, Vol. XIII, No. 2, Fall 1988, p. 44.

Burnson provides a plot summary and favorable review of Love in the Days of Rage.

When the streets of Paris erupted with student demonstrations twenty years ago, San Francisco poet / publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti began jotting down notes in his expatriate's journal which recorded the events as a painter might view them—impressionistically. It comes as small surprise, then, to observe that his novella should move at the same painterly, unmannered pace. Love in the Days of Rage challenges the reader on several stylistic levels as it attempts to mirror the anarchistic uprising of '68 which briefly united intellectuals, artists, and proletariats in common cause. It's an uneven ride, at times maddeningly confused, but noble in intent and final effect.

Our lovers are mature, yet unconventional. Annie is the forty-year-old daughter of New York "old...