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Hot mamas
Patricia Traxler's brainy erotic thriller
BY JULIA HANNA

Don't jump to conclusions when you see the crimson-drenched cover of Blood. It may look like the latest challenger to the vampire fests of Anne Rice, but Patricia Traxler's first novel is populated by human characters with very familiar desires. There's also a good deal of actual blood here, but inasmuch as she's the author of three works of poetry, it's not surprising that Traxler seems obsessed by the many metaphorical and emotional layers embedded in that word. From familial blood ties to the blood that nourishes an unborn life to blood lust driven by thwarted desire, Traxler uses her story of an artist's fellowship year at Radcliffe's Larkin Institute (modeled after the former Bunting Institute) to probe the rich ways in which this life substance intersects with love, desire, friendship, sex, and spirituality.

Norrie Blume is a gifted painter in her mid '30s when she's granted a studio and stipend at the Larkin. It's just the break she needs to quit her day job and move into her own apartment. Now she can pursue art full-time and have sex with her lover (a married writer named Michael Sullivan) without the annoyance of a roommate's presence. Soon Norrie meets two new neighbors and fellow "Larkies": a Chilean journalist named Clara and a stunning Indian poet named Devi. Clara is needy and persistent in her demands for Norrie's friendship, and her intense idolization of Devi is unsettling. No surprise that she drives away the other two women, who soon form a close friendship. Their bond, which leads Devi to pose for a series of Norrie's paintings, drives Clara half-mad with jealousy, creating a plausible motivation for the events that tip Blood into the territory of a psychological whodunit.

Traxler is expert at detailing the tensions and high emotions that arise from this particular variety of ménage à trois among female friends. Because Norrie tells the story, we're drawn into a first-person intimacy that reveals every psychological nuance of an unreturned phone call or a late-night confession. Norrie's observations also include some of the more pedestrian details of her life - whether the subject is an apartment's décor or a murder scene, we get the same tight perspective. It's like constantly being in the company of a friend infatuated with her own droning voice. Sometimes I felt like rolling my eyes and making a talk-talk mouth with my hand. But I also felt compelled to continue reading.

No doubt that's just what Traxler intended. Her story moves through the porous boundaries between carnal and spiritual love, desire and fear, love and hate. In one of the meditative sections that opens each chapter, Norrie reflects on the recent death of her old friend Ida and her attachment to Michael:

"I wish I could be freed of desire like Ida. . . . I wish I didn't need you, wish my flesh didn't waken at the thought of you. But one day I'll be ready for what Ida has met - the moment when all earthly desire empties from the body and the spirit rises to ascendancy over the flesh.

And in the meantime I have to accept two things: that part of being alive is to desire; and that desire is, by nature, not containable."

Yet Norrie's steamy affair is the least convincing part of the novel. An up-and-coming writer, Michael has just published a book Norrie describes as "a lyrical, rowdy, and poignant account of growing up Irish in South Boston's projects." His dialogue often has the same self-conscious tone; we get such hoky quips as, "No, ma'am, the Irish never give up. Does the potato famine ring a bell? So, okay, I'll arrange for a U-Haul for tomorrow afternoon?" The sex, described in eye-popping detail, is more convincing (and more fun to read about), but it begins to seem abstract after a while. They come a lot, they come hard, they break some kind of sexual sound barrier for the variety and deep spiritual connection of their couplings. In the end, Norrie's relationships with Devi, Clara, and her painting leave a more lasting impression.

Traxler's depiction of Norrie's artistic process is one of the most engrossing aspects of Blood - it's a bit like seeing a flower bloom through time-lapse photography. Writing about the making of art is no mean feat, and watching Norrie's paintings unfold creates a satisfying trajectory to balance the novel's less successful moments as an erotic thriller.

Issue Date: January 3 - 10, 2002
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