Rapture - Hardcover

Minot, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007142250 ISBN 13: 9780007142255

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2002

Synopsis

A powerful, sensuous new novel from the critically acclaimed author of ‘Evening’.

'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? And where will it lead?

Graphic, provocative and reminiscent of Hanif Kureishi ‘Intimacy’, Susan Minot's striking novel dissects a love affair in breathtaking detail.

About this title

Review:

'Mesmerising.' Vogue

'Few novels capture so delicately the bittersweet ambiguities of love.' Esquire

'Susan Minot's third novel makes painfully honest reading for anyone who's ever fallen for the wrong man. Unsettling and beautifully written.' She

'Susan Minot is a precise and accomplished writer, and Rapture is a handsome artefact, combining fine attention to physical detail with a keen sense of the evasions and queasy half-truths of lust and attraction.' Sunday Telegraph

'Minot writes very well about the bad faith and special pleading that attend the break-up of an affair, and about the way that love can turn into obsession. The rigid formal constraints that she has imposed upon herself only sharpen the intensity of the writing.' The Times

‘A brilliant new novel which strips bare the complexities of love ...A haunting tale of love lost which will leave a mark long after you've turned the page.’ Glasgow Evening Times

'A brilliantly observed account of a doomed love affair. Witty and unusual.' Sunday Express, Read of the Week

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: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0007142250
• ISBN 13: 9780007142255
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128