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Priscilla Long
, March 12, 2013
(view all comments by Priscilla Long)
Sex, in Sex and Death in the American Novel by Sarah Martinez, is a long, slow, highly spiced meal, a dance, a quest, a search for a lost father in the shape of the lover, a trespass of conventional boundaries, a seeking after freedom and after art. This spectacular first novel is about grief and longing and literature. It's also a page-turner. I fell in love with Vivi, dancer and writer, and with both her lovers. In the end this is a deeply romantic love story about writing and dancing and loving in which the heroine must go to the wilderness alone to face down her demons. She returns to a sweeter and more generous (but still unconventional) intimacy. Read this novel!
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