RAPTURE
Susan Minot, Author . Knopf $18 (128p) ISBN 978-0-375-41327-8
Minot's new novella, set on the fringes of the film world, addresses one of her perennial themes, the different meaning men and women give to passion. Thirty-four-year-old Kay Bailey, a film production designer, has an affair with director Benjamin Young while they are shooting a film in Mexico. Benjamin, however, is engaged to Vanessa Crane, the girlfriend who has seen him through the ups and mostly downs of his filmmaking career. When Kay and Benjamin return to New York City, she tries to end the affair. But he is persistent, and what was casual becomes serious for Kay. All of this is narrated during one act of sex as, in alternating interior monologues, the two recall the events that have led to this moment. Engaged as they are, they do not speak; the landscape of their sex is entirely in their imaginations, and they could not imagine it more differently. While Kay comes to exalt the moment, Benjamin reveals himself as a cad, his life on the skids. Minot (
Reviewed on: 12/17/2001
Release date: 01/01/2002
Genre: Fiction
Hardcover - 128 pages - 9780007141760
Hardcover - 128 pages - 9780375413278
Open Ebook - 57 pages - 9780375414428
Paperback - 132 pages - 9780375727887