Writer-artist Arias-Misson’s fourth novel (after The Return of the Mayan to Manhattan
) is recounted by an unnamed narrator in a voice so matter-of-fact that the monstrous taboo of incest becomes almost mundane. After his “tender rape” by a housemaid at age “four or five,” an incident he suspects inspires his incestuous yearnings, the narrator revels in the feel of his mother’s silk underwear, seeks sex with older women at age 13, and by 16 is his mother’s lover. Their feverish relationship lasts for more than two decades, until he beds his daughter (her mother is absent from the narrative) when she turns 16; he later leaves his daughter’s boudoir for his sister’s, and the reunited siblings settle into sensual middle-age cohabitation in Paris. Arias-Misson and his sexually insatiable narrator detail consensual acts of sodomy, bondage, golden showers, fanciful and sometimes violent role-playing and sex during menstruation with a precision that would make de Sade smile. The graphic sexual intensity is sure to engage readers who like their erotica with a literary bent, but the novel’s dispassionate depiction of incest and unrelenting jubilation at perversity for perversity’s sake will for many come off as plainly played for shock value. (Dec.)
