Rapture - Hardcover

Minot, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375413278 ISBN 13: 9780375413278

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2002

Synopsis

Four years after her critically acclaimed novel Evening, Susan Minot gives us a new work of startling intimacy and precision.

Using a single interlude–a brief encounter of old lovers; two bodies entwined on a bed at midday–Minot defines the distance that erupts at what seems to be the height of connection, as well as the extent to which the senses deceive, and the intensely private eroticism of fantasy and the imagination. Minot's lovers are mesmerizing in their individual journeys–one moving toward a kind of holy consummation, the other toward abnegation and blank despair. This is the wayward history of their efforts to make contact with each other while deluding themselves about the nature of the contact they're making. Graphic, erotic, provocative, Rapture is a meditation on romantic love, sex, and their reflections in the life of the mind.

About this title

Review:

"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

From the Back Cover:

'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’s '‘Intimacy’', Susan Minot's new novel dissects a love affair in breathtaking detail.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375413278
• ISBN 13: 9780375413278
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 115