Film Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s



Sex act
Susan Minot’s little book
BY JULIA HANNA

Rapture
By Susan Minot. Alfred A. Knopf, 121 pages, $18.


I like little books. Marguerite Duras’s The Lover, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime. Concise jewels that run well under 200 pages, they inhabit the rich emotional regions of memory while doing so with completely involving immediacy. Susan Minot’s Rapture is a little book too, tipping the scales at just over 100 pages, and like her previous novel, Evening, it stretches the boundaries of narrative time, moving between past and present. Where Evening dwelt in the comparatively quaint territory of an aging woman recalling a youthful, life-changing summer weekend, however, Rapture uses an epic blow job and a thirtysomething love triangle as its organizing structure.

Remember how you used to sneak your mom’s Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz novels and skim for the good parts? Well, Minot gets right down to business from the first sentence. " He lay back like the ambushed dead, arms flung down at his sides, legs splayed out and feet sticking up, naked. " And a few pages further along: " Her fingers encircled the base of his penis and she ran her parted lips up and down him, introducing her tongue like a third lip. " There’s only one problem: Benjamin Young, the recipient of Kay Bailey’s studious ministrations, remains oddly distant from the proceedings. " He did like it, though. Who wouldn’t? He especially liked seeing her down there after this long time. " Not exactly Princess Daisy, is it?

Minot’s novel is more involved with the emotional and psychological nuances that wind through the act of sex, though its characters succumb to the inevitability of pure physical attraction, too. When Kay interviews for the position of production designer on his documentary film, Benjamin’s response is immediate. " His chest felt a thump. When she walked in, he looked away. Not that she was so amazing-looking or anything, but there was something promising about her. " Engaged to Vanessa Crane, his long-time girlfriend, Benjamin struggles for about 10 seconds before confessing his feelings to Kay while on a shoot in Mexico. From there it’s a short step to a maddening affair in which each manages to torture the other to the point of insanity. Benjamin can’t seem to leave Vanessa, but he won’t leave Kay alone either. " The whole thing was pretty fucking pathetic, " he decides, and after all the sturm und drang you have to agree with him on that point.

Rapture takes place in the aftermath, a year later, during a single afternoon in which the two meditate on the past while Kay pleasures Benjamin with worshipful concentration. The narrative alternates between their perspectives and emphasizes the gap between them; while Benjamin is pleasantly surprised and somewhat puzzled to be back in Kay’s bed, she considers it a transforming, almost mystical event. " She tended to him with reverence. The more she lavished attention on him, the more her self seemed to fade. . . . She wanted to forget that self which lay awake at night full of dread, wondering, What is going to become of me? "

Minot’s use of flashback and slow-motion sequences of description gives readers a 360-degree view of this pair’s history. There are wonderful moments that bring fresh insight to the familiar story between men and women: " Meeting an old lover could be a kind of ambush. . . . Even if all feeling was gone and the person no longer held the tiniest glimmer of fascination, your body could still react and you’d feel it, like the vibration of an old land mine . . . being tripped and exploding in the distance. " There’s also quite a bit of silliness, as when Kay imagines Benjamin as " the ship the gods had sent her to sail. "

It’s hard to read such lines with a straight face, and sometimes I wasn’t sure Minot wanted me to — when Kay, head bobbing, imagines " an oil rig on a dusty Texas flatland, " she deftly captures the hilarious absurdity of sex. But there are many other preciously observed moments that in the end confuse the book’s tone and distance the reader. She writes of Kay, " Everything was swimming upward. She rode the steep rises and something luminous and thin ran up and down her spine. Light was coming out of — out of her ears, out of her forehead! " Yes, folks, we’re getting close, but the climax (Benjamin’s and the book’s) is a letdown. Despite the deep emotions it examines, Minot’s addition to the little-book genre doesn’t accumulate enough meaning to create the satisfying sense of weight and density achieved by its more memorable predecessors.

Susan Minot reads at Brookline Booksmith this Tuesday, February 5. Call (617) 566-6660.

Issue Date: January 31-February 7, 2002
Back to the Books table of contents.