Rapture [Anglais] [Broché]

The thrilling, self-loathing, and compelling nature of sexual habit between reunited lovers is the subject of Susan Minot's short novel Rapture. An afternoon of commingling frees up the minds of Benjamin and Kay to ponder relationships, sex, and the complexities between men and women. They focus especially on the attendant hopes, misunderstandings, and quashed feelings that occur when people are involved yet on the fence about each other. Benjamin and Kay evoke no great sympathy, but in this frank portrayal of a faulty pairing, Minot hits on many emotional truths hidden in the motivations for sex and the development and maintenance of relationships in the almighty quest for "the One."

It was amazing how much things could change between two people. That you could feel a person was your eternal mate one day and three months later bump into him in the flower district and hardly know what to say. It was after she'd fallen in love with him after they'd not been able to see each other on a friendly basis, so it was disorienting to see his figure standing there on the sidewalk, purporting to be like anyone else's.

Rapture is a brief but thorough exploration of how alone and private we are, even when trying to open up to someone else. --Michael Ferch --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Two old lovers meet again for another erotic union, but their stories lead in different directions. With a ten-city author tour and a 60,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

This novella takes place during a single act of oral sex, wittily reminding us (as did its notorious counterpart, Harold Brodkey's "Innocence") that a lot more thinking goes on between the sheets than is generally acknowledged. Benjamin is a handsome and hapless film director with a moneyed and supportive fiancée; Kay is his former production designer, with whom he had a fling on a shoot in Mexico. After three years of agonized liaisons and enforced partings, Benjamin and Kay fall into bed once more, but they seem to bring the rest of their lives along with them, and Minot's saucy conceit evolves into a disconcerting examination of love and war between the sexes. As Kay and Benjamin review the affair from their respective vantage points, it becomes increasingly clear to the reader that—physical proximity notwithstanding—they are worlds apart.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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 belonging. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Minot reaches a new level in her career. . . . Brimming with stylistic and emotional intelligence." ?San Francisco Chronicle

"A disconcerting examination of love and war between the sexes." ?The New Yorker

"Minot?s story . . . is timeless, and she makes you feel its pure, raw ache. . . . Rapture is erotic, but more: it?s romantic in the true sense of the word." ?Miami Herald

"Explores a tragic irony of love and sex: how one partner can reach the heights of devotion at the very instant the other is dumped into the pits of despair." ?Time Out New York

"Mesmerizing . . . provocative." ?Harper?s Bazaar

"In Minot's writing, one is often reminded of Henry James. Like James, she pursues the filaments of emotion that almost escape language. . . . Minot's writing [is] beautiful, evocative, and self-assured." ?O, The Oprah Magazine

"A splendid piece of narrative sleight-of-hand . . . that further confirms Minot's place among our finest novelists." ?Minneapolis Star Tribune

"I would challenge any reader to read this and not find moments of gut-wrenching truth, as if Minot had looked straight into each of our hearts." ?The Providence Journal

"In language simultaneously rich and spare. . . . [Rapture] has a muscular swagger uncommon in fiction by women." ?Vogue

"[Rapture offers] equally convincing portraits of the ways men and women think about love and sex." ?Interview

"Minot takes an insightful, intelligent, humorous look at the tangled mess of modern love." ?The Toronto Star

"[Minot] draws the reader in with subtle strokes of mood and atmosphere and with her ability to express so much in so few words." ?The Oakland Press

"You get the sense that Minot has lived every moment, spoken every syllable, felt every emotion. The weird thing is: so have you." ?The Baltimore City Paper

The setting is a New York apartment where two long-estranged lovers try to resuscitate their passion. Kay is old enough to be skeptical about men–this man in particular–but still alert to the possibility of true love. Benjamin is a filmmaker with an appealing waywardness and a conveniently disappearing fiancée. As the two lie entwined in bed, Susan Minot ushers readers across an entire landscape of memory and sensation to reveal the infinite nuances of sex: its power to exalt and deceive, to connect two separate selves or make them fully aware of their solitude. Honest and unflinching, the result is a hypnotic reading experience.

"Minot reaches a new level in her career. . . . Brimming with stylistic and emotional intelligence." –San Francisco Chronicle

"A disconcerting examination of love and war between the sexes." –The New Yorker

"Minot’s story . . . is timeless, and she makes you feel its pure, raw ache. . . . Rapture is erotic, but more: it’s romantic in the true sense of the word." –Miami Herald

"Explores a tragic irony of love and sex: how one partner can reach the heights of devotion at the very instant the other is dumped into the pits of despair." –Time Out New York

"Mesmerizing . . . provocative." –Harper’s Bazaar

"In Minot's writing, one is often reminded of Henry James. Like James, she pursues the filaments of emotion that almost escape language. . . . Minot's writing [is] beautiful, evocative, and self-assured." –O, The Oprah Magazine

"A splendid piece of narrative sleight-of-hand . . . that further confirms Minot's place among our finest novelists." –Minneapolis Star Tribune

"I would challenge any reader to read this and not find moments of gut-wrenching truth, as if Minot had looked straight into each of our hearts." –The Providence Journal

"In language simultaneously rich and spare. . . . [Rapture] has a muscular swagger uncommon in fiction by women." –Vogue

"[Rapture offers] equally convincing portraits of the ways men and women think about love and sex." –Interview

"Minot takes an insightful, intelligent, humorous look at the tangled mess of modern love." –The Toronto Star

"[Minot] draws the reader in with subtle strokes of mood and atmosphere and with her ability to express so much in so few words." –The Oakland Press

"You get the sense that Minot has lived every moment, spoken every syllable, felt every emotion. The weird thing is: so have you." –The Baltimore City Paper

Susan Minot's first novel, Monkeys, was published in a dozen countries and received the Prix Femina Étranger in France. She is the author of Lust & Other Stories, Folly, Evening, and Poems 4 A.M., and wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. She lives on an island in Maine.