MONSIEUR PA (BECKER)

What sort ofwoman has a taste for middle-aged, married men? Ellie, twenty years old and living in Paris,leads a light and carefree life until she meets Mister-amarried surgeon approaching middle age. Beginning with their frenzied affair in a hotel room in thefifteenth arrondissement, Monsieur details the clandestineTuesday morning hotel meetings and fleeting phone callsspanning several months of sexual adventure. Generous with her body and never lacking eroticimagination (or partners-men and women), Ellie illuminates her deviations in a lucid, ferocious, and passionate tale. Often shocking but never gratuitous, Monsieur is, paradoxically, a coming-of-age story-her seduction of the married man and its devastating aftermathleaving Ellie older and wiser than she once was after their four-month affaircomes to its unpredictable conclusion. At once a novel-confession and adescription of the descent from passion to cruel fantasy, this is the disenchantment of a contemporary Lolita.