Rapture (2002) – Susan Minot
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Excerpt
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.
Review:
The concept of the tale drawn out through reflection during an extremely contained frame story has been done before. Well before Nicholson Baker’s Mezzanine shoe-horned a novel into a character’s ascending an escalator on his way to buy shoe laces, Wright Morris’ Field of Vision thrust a novel’s worth of thoughts into the minds of a few spectators watching a bullfight. One might even blame Laurence Sterne, whose “autobiography” of Tristram Shandy is perpetually delayed through digression, for begetting this trend of seeking plotless prose through cutesy narrative frames. Eventually someone will manage to cast an entire picaresque into a stifled yawn. It’s all just a question of scale. —http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2004/12/which-just-happens-to-mimic-ms.html [Sept 2006]
Review:
Kay and Benjamin meet for lunch a year after their affair has ended. The relationship Benjamin was in at the time (with his fiancée, Vanessa) has also finished, but he still sees her from time to time. In fact, he is due to see Vanessa after lunch, though he doesn’t tell Kay that. Kay finds that, far from wearing off, her love for Benjamin is stronger than ever. She doesn’t tell him that. Both tell themselves they had no idea this was going to happen: they never for a moment thought they would end up in bed after a couple of innocent tomato sandwiches in her apartment. —http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,780108,00.html [Sept 2006]
Interview:
Perhaps fellow Maine resident Stephen King imparted some dark psychic influence on Minot’s soul. “Yes, ‘Rapture’ is a horror story,” Minot says. “It definitely is. Many love affairs are.” She then gives a healthy horselaugh. “They can be as devastating as death and war.” —http://archive.salon.com/sex/feature/2002/02/25/minot/index1.html [Sept 2006]
Biography:
Susan Minot (b. December 7, 1956) is an American prize-winning novelist and short story author.
Born in Manchester, Massachusetts, Minot is the author of the novel, Monkeys (1986), which won the Prix Femina in 1988. She has also won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize for her writing. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Minot [Sept 2006]
See also: American literature – fellatio in literature