cover image Behind Closed Doors

Behind Closed Doors

Alina Reyes. Grove Press, $22 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8021-1589-8

French erotica goes interactive in this playful, vividly imagined collage of spicy sexual fantasies that allows the reader to choose the sex of the narrator and direct the flow of the action. The excitement begins when the hero or heroine--depending upon which end of the book the reader opens first--happens upon a carnival, wanders into a mysterious caravan through ""The Doors of Eros"" and learns that a destined mate is also wandering through this labyrinth of lechery. As the two search for one another (through a series of numbered doors corresponding to chapters), each engages in a smorgasbord of lewd adventures. After each experience, the reader is given a choice of doors to open next. None of this is at all politically correct, and the assortment of sex partners includes everything from fat ladies and circus clowns to firemen, jungle animals and hermaphroditic angels. But Reyes (The Butcher, 1995) spins her tale with an improbable delicacy, even when detailing taboo sex acts--and fills her pages with intense dreamlike imagery and quirky symbolism that make her febrile, titillating vision hard to resist. (May) FYI: The Butcher has sold 500,000 copies in France and has been translated into 15 languages.