Aureole: An Erotic Sequence

By Carole Maso

Book Overview

Two women leaf through a book of French slang, with its delicate and delicious mixing of food and sex. A man and a woman sit in a Parisian dive, caressing each other's hands. Two lovers take late-night refuge in a beach cabana, their lovemaking lit by the lights of his automobile. These are glimpses of some of the haunting scenes and characters that people this sometimes wild, sometimes elusive exploration of desire's magical and subversive qualities.

"The fragile space--in the place right before the heart breaks--this is the space Carole Maso explores brilliantly and sensuously in her astonishing new prose fiction. Whether she is writing about two women washing lentils or a man's desire for a woman's pair of ink-stained hands, Maso charges her very sentences with such sexual energy that form and content literally become one. Reading Aureole is pure pleasure."--Marjorie Perloff, Edge of Irony

"Carole Maso is that rare creature--an original Her voice and vision are like no one else's."--Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story

Carole Maso is the author of Ghost Dance, The Art Lover, Defiance, and other novels. She has received many awards, most recently the Lannan Literary Fellowship for fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872864103
• ISBN13: 9780872864108
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

The Inebriating Language of Desire.

Alright, so maybe not every page works to evoke the space before the moment of _____, but those that do are blindingly evocative, work up a fever. I'm thinking Anju Flying Streamers After. The Women Wash Lentils. You'd seriously have to die in the middle of the chapter to put the book down. It's language play, a hypothesis worth testing, worth reading. Think of jazz. It's not Coltrane's Ascension. It's that very same morning but with the shutters still closed. Maybe one day, Carole? And as far as the stab at post modern notions by a previous reviewer. Just Wikipedia the subject. Why would a person ever want to write Aureole in the face of traditionalist criticism? And the answer is not, "to be cool/different."

Wonderful poetic non-sensical passion

Very different - but, very wonderful. It may not be a linear novel - with an actual 'story' - but it is an excellent read. Maso is an incredibly talented writer.