SOURCE: "Professor Pinocchio," in Chicago Tribune—Books, January 27, 1991, pp. 1, 5.

Markey is an educator. In the review below, she offers a favorable assessment of Pinocchio in Venice.

Hide your eyes Walt Disney fans. Here comes a scary sequel to Pinocchio designed to squash the life out of Jiminy Cricket and trample in the dust his goody-good philosophy. But then maybe it is about time. Carlo Collodi's original 19th Century fairy tale was never meant to be a simpering Technicolor homily but an alarm, a sinister allegory on life's meager blessings and plentiful pitfalls.

And in this sense Robert Coover's adult fable Pinocchio in Venice comes closer to the stern morality of the early Italian story than Disney's saccharine film ever did. In fact, going beyond the earlier tale, Coover adds some frightening thoughts on human nature, questions that Collodi probably never even considered in the last century.

Can anyone...