cover image Remembering the Bone House: An Erotics of Place and Space

Remembering the Bone House: An Erotics of Place and Space

Nancy Mairs. HarperCollins Publishers, $17.95 (273pp) ISBN 978-0-06-016041-8

Now in her mid-40s, Mairs, an essayist and poet, recalls the past in lyrical descriptions of her home and loving kin in New England, as well as the house in Arizona where she settled later with her husband and children. But readers may not get far past the threshhold of understanding the ``bone house,'' as the author regards her body. Mairs ( Plaintext ; In All the Rooms of the Yellow House ) is a person of accomplishments, coping with multiple sclerosis and recovering from suicide attempts and other ills to succeed as a college teacher as well as a writer. Yet her book loses much of its zest because of her incessant repetition, in eventually wearisome detail, of her sexual adventures with many men and her brief affair with a woman. Though Mairs believes these experiences were necessary to create erotic poetry--the linchpin of her life--the lurid effects drown her poet's voice and seem more exploitative than revelatory. (Apr.)