Rapture

December 17, 2001
Minot's new novella, set on the fringes of the film world, addresses one of her perennial themes, the different meaning men and women give to passion. Thirty-four-year-old Kay Bailey, a film production designer, has an affair with director Benjamin Young while they are shooting a film in Mexico. Benjamin, however, is engaged to Vanessa Crane, the girlfriend who has seen him through the ups and mostly downs of his filmmaking career. When Kay and Benjamin return to New York City, she tries to end the affair. But he is persistent, and what was casual becomes serious for Kay. All of this is narrated during one act of sex as, in alternating interior monologues, the two recall the events that have led to this moment. Engaged as they are, they do not speak; the landscape of their sex is entirely in their imaginations, and they could not imagine it more differently. While Kay comes to exalt the moment, Benjamin reveals himself as a cad, his life on the skids. Minot (Monkeys; Lust; Evening) has a great ear for the callow way people talk, scrupulously mimicking their groping thoughts and at times making a poetry of their inarticulateness: "She sort of sidewise conjured up a semidomestic arrangement tilting away from the totally
conventional one she'd experienced with her parents." Moreover, Minot doesn't hide her characters' pretentiousness, as when Benjamin envisions his weak will as an "unfixable blot of doom" or Kay feels "altered in some big nameless way." All of which should add up to great satire, but Minot's novella is satiric only intermittently. She seems to take Kay's beatification seriously; even Benjamin is granted a cascade of sad and heroic images near his climax. The book is an odd amalgam, at times a smart satire, at times a way-we-live-now portrayal of 30-something life. Other times it just, well, sort of strains credibility. (Jan. 28)Forecast:The "he said, she said" premise is titillating, and readers will respond accordingly regardless of the critical reception. Some may grumble at the book's brevity, but the 60,000-copy first printing should sell out easily.

February 1, 2002
Kay and Benjamin, thirtysomething New York filmmakers, meet again many months after the end of their rocky love affair. They find the old attraction still strong and take advantage of circumstances to hop into bed, although they both know that it's a bad idea. Their afternoon tryst is physically and mentally overwhelming, and at a peak moment of sexual pleasure each partner's mind wanders. This short novel consists of their very separate and contrasting memories, hopes, and reflections, which create an amusing and mordant counterpoint to their seemingly deep human connection. Minot's clever peek behind the bedroom door will appeal to readers not averse to a bit of graphic sex in a novel of modern manners (fans of HBO's Sex and the City will enjoy the book). This latest by the author of Evening and Monkeys is recommended for most fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/01.] Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2001
This extraordinarily piquant novel by the author of " Monkeys" (1986) is framed--let's be frank--by an act of fellatio. During the course of this intimate experience, the man and woman surrender not only to sexual pleasure but also to a mutual and simultaneous need to rethink the circuitous path that led to this point in their on-again, off-again relationship. "Meeting an old lover could be a kind of ambush," as one character admits. "No matter how grounded you were in the present, your body could send you into the past." In alternate and silent voices, Benjamin and Kay recall the stages of how each infiltrated the other's heart, mind, and even soul, with the rush of sexual excitement prompting this involuntary analysis of the history of their affair. "Something had endured and brought them together again," as one of them reflects, and to identify what that is compels them to sort through--as if through a folder of documents--their shared experiences. In lush language correlative to the situation but in amazingly concise form, Minot explores the significance of sex, the value of longing, and the rewards and drawbacks of " be"longing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)