Bay of Souls

Island Heat

I'll be honest. Before I started reading Robert Stone's new novel, I had a bit of a problem with the story line. And who wouldn't? An academic in a small university town, caught in a sterile marriage, becomes obsessed with an impossibly sexy and very, very dangerous woman. Likewise, for the first 100 pages, I was more than a little concerned that the novel's femme fatale was merely, well, a cartoonish fantasy-figure femme fatale. But just when we thought we had this character, the impossibly sexy, mysteriously accented, scary (voodoo is involved) woman, we're proven wrong. These turned out to be unfair and baseless concerns, and Bay of Souls is Robert Stone's most spellbinding book since Outerbridge Reach.

Michael Ahearn, the academic, and Lara Purcell, both seem to recognize in the other what each seems to lack -- Michael lacks fire (something Purcell possesses in spades) and Lara lacks soul (something Michael might even have too much of). Their first date is a semi-innocent game of squash, which leads to -- more quickly than could ever be advisable -- hot, depraved sex. The sex involves leashes. Michael attempts, in a way, to salvage his marriage to the formidable Kristen, but his trip in pursuit of Lara, to her home, the corrupt and treacherous island St. Trinity, is the nail in that particular coffin. Michael's island adventure, it turns out, is more hazardous than he could have foreseen. Bay of Souls becomes, page by page, increasingly hypnotic, crescendoing into a feverish, unforgettable conclusion.

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