Two former lovers are sprawled naked across a bed, spending an
afternoon engaged in an intimate sexual act. Yet readers expecting
titillation or erotica from Susan Minot's slender novel will be in
for a disappointment. The lovers are peculiarly detached from what
their bodies are doing. Benjamin lies back and receives Kay's oral
attentions but 'as he watched, he felt the pleasant sensation, but
it was not making it up to his head'. Kay is capable of
experiencing rapture, but she seems to be more absorbed by the
memories of the early days of their affair than giving or receiving
sexual gratification. Minot's earlier novel, Evening, established
her reputation for writing uninhibited, erotic prose. Although the
title of this work promises more of the same, it's an analysis of
the breakdown of a flawed relationship, conducted in flashback,
rather than a work of erotica. The lovers are both self-obsessed
and selfish. Benjamin has been with Vanessa for many years when he
meets Kay, and he has no intention of upsetting the stability of
that relationship. He is a peculiarly passive individual, whose
spiritual impotence is almost matched by his physical inadequacy.
The novel reaches its climax at the same time as Benjamin, most
definitely 'not with a bang, but a whimper'. Minot's novel
challenges the perceived ideal that perfect romantic and sexual
love go hand in hand. Kay 'worships' Benjamin as she pleasures him
- indeed the only time there is any direct speech is when she
expresses this adulation, at the moment of Benjamin's climax. This
phallic veneration appears all the more pitiful as Benjamin lies
fretting about being late for Vanessa. There is a sense that Minot
rather dislikes her pair of emotional misfits, and is using them to
highlight the bleakness of many sexual relationships. She
undoubtedly had her tongue in her cheek when she gave her novel its
title. (Kirkus UK)
'The bedspread was sloughing off the foot of the bed, the white sheets were as flat as paper. This is not what she'd pictured when she asked him over for lunch today. It really wasn't.'
Taking one single interlude ? two bodies entwined on a bed at midday, lovers rekindling an old affair ? Susan Minot's new novel chronicles a relationship from the alternating perspectives of a man and a women.
Thoughts cascade through Benjamin's mind, memories of the chest thumping moment when he first met Kay; of the night they shared under the mosquito net on the pink bed in Oaxaca; and of his fiancé, Vanessa, and the simple choices that face him. Memories unspool in Kay's mind too. She recalls the dangerous lure of Benjamin, the man who drove her scepticism away; the dread and the thrill of the first night they spent together; and now she asks herself, how has she let him slip back into her life like this?
Graphic, provocative and reminiscent of Hanif Kureishi ?Intimacy?, Susan Minot's new novel dissects a love affair in breathtaking detail.
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