Rapture

The setting is a New York apartment where two long-estranged lovers try to resuscitate their passion. Kay is old enough to be skeptical about menthisman in particularbut still alert to the possibility of true love. Benjamin is a filmmaker with an appealing waywardness and a conveniently disappearing fiancee. As the two lie entwined in bed, Susan Minot ushers readers across an entire landscape of memory and sensation to reveal the infinite nuances of sex: its power to exalt and deceive, to connect two separate selves or make them fully aware of their solitude. Honest and unflinching, the result is a hypnotic reading experience.

Susan Minot's first novel, <b>Monkeys</b>, was published in a dozen countries and received the Prix Femina Étranger in France. She is the author of <b>Lust & Other Stories, Folly, Evening</b>, and <b>Poems 4 A.M.</b>, and wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci's <i>Stealing Beauty</i>. She lives on an island in Maine.