Rapture

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I picked up this book at the airport a while ago. It's interesting in that the entire story takes place during one rendevouz; in particular, a session in fellatio. There are flashbacks to help develop the characters and plot. However, it's one of those stories that doesn't really have a story. It's about a relationship that seemed to end, but not quite yet. It goes nowhere, like the characters.

Minot goes into great detail in her descriptions of what goes through the characters' minds, which is what ultimately drives the book. Eventually, however, I just found it tedious. Kay was a fully developed character, but Benjamin was totally unlikeable, too afraid to face his feelings, too lazy to do the right thing, too apathetic to do anything about his life. In the end, nothing was accomplished, nothing was resolved. Basically all that was proven is that people use each other no matter how wrong they know it is, or how ashamed it makes them feel.

I think that it must be very difficult to write books like this and I have to give credit to Minot for trying. It's hard to write a story based on whatever's going through one or two character's minds, without it sounding completely self-centered. After a while you can see that they spend so much time thinking and dwelling on things that they fail to take any action to move the relationship or situation, into ANY direction. Basically, to me it read like a story that had no plot. It's actually hard for me to even call it a story. It was more or less a vignette about a doomed couple, void of any kind of passion or even emotion, and void of a future. Strangely enough, it wasn't even frustrating, just very boring.

Rating:
Summary: Not a Prayer
Review: I thought the premise of this book had great promise: People all of a sudden sprouting wings after a sickness, and the way they and society deal with it. The character development is Nil, the story is choppy and unorganized, i got about 2/3 through it and gave up completely. The author spent way to much time on the skin of this novel and not too much time on the innards.

Rating:
Summary: A warm cup of water
Review: I was introduced to Minot's work with "Lust," a short story with which I fell in love. "Rapture," however, was a much different experience. After almost abandoning this book several times, I finished it to find that I still didn't care for or sympathize with either character in the least. I feel as lukewarm about this experience as Benjamin and Kay do about theirs. While perhaps my indifference to this text is evidence of Minot's artistry, one would like to be moved in some way by literature, be it the words, the imagery, the characters, the setting---something, but this piece leaves me void, and I feel none the wiser or richer for having read it. I feel like I have just given myself to a very bad lover, but maybe THAT is the beauty of this work.

Rating:
Summary: A Guilty Pleasure - Though not as good as it could have been
Review: I would agree with the other reviewers that said this book missed its mark. However, I still enjoyed it and am glad I read it. Here is why:

This novella is a very dark treatment of sexual relations and how difficult it is to surrender oneself to a single relationship of fidelity. The major characters are Kay and Benjamin, who go though their relationship that cannot exist. Why? Because Benjamin is engaged to another woman, Vanessa, that he really loves.

Where this book is successful is in exploring the "second guessings" that come with people knowing they are bad for each other... but still craving each others flesh. Minot's writing leaves no question that the characters are connected in a type of love... just not the kind that can go anywhere. Thus, it is an intensely frustrating experience trying to follow them through the encounter that is the backdrop to the story ---> a session of oral sex that will most likely be their last.

Where this story failed for me, is that it seemed to short-schrift the sexual tension. I have never been so unimpressed with a b.j. in my life... yet that is the premise of what the characters "rapture" is. Thus, it sets up a sexuality that is never delivered on, and has a very dark take on relationships.

Again, I certainly understand why people were disappointed... yet I did enjoy it, and would recommend it to those prone to helplessness and dark stories.

Rating:
Summary: More communication than titillation
Review: Is it possible to write a book in which a single sex act encompasses the entire story, and yet have that same book be about much more than sex? Susan Minot proves that it can be done in "Rapture."

Let's be clear here: "Rapture" is not a book about sex. At least, it's not only about sex, which seems to disappoint some readers, given the premise. It's also a book about relationships between men and women, about misunderstandings that can occur between them, about love and intimacy, about distance and disappointment. It's essentially about the things that can go right and wrong in a relationship, and about how very different one person's perspective can be from another's.

As "Rapture" opens, the reader observes a rendezvous between two former lovers, now together again unexpectedly, just beginning a sexual interlude. As it progresses, we are given insights into their past from the perspective of both the man and the woman, and we can see how each interprets the same events. Sometimes their take on their shared past is similar, but other times (more often), they see it in widely disparate ways.

As the act progresses towards its inevitable conclusion, the story takes surprising turns. While at least one aspect of the ending is somewhat predictable (how could it not be?), the tone and mood established by Minot's tale at that point give even that a new angle. What would likely be a trite and pithy conclusion in most authors' hands becomes refreshingly new again in Minot's treatment of it.

When all is said and done, "Rapture" is an insightful look at relationships and modern attitudes about love and intimacy, and at how sex can color one's view of these things in surprising ways. It is not intended to titillate its readers, but rather, to communicate to them. It's not a particularly happy book, nor is it sad. It is, however, a compelling story, elegantly told, and unremorsefully observant. Minot proves her skills here, both as a storyteller and as a canny observer of human nature.

Rating:
Summary: More communication than titillation
Review: Is it possible to write a book in which a single sex act encompasses the entire story, and yet have that same book be about much more than sex? Susan Minot proves that it can be done in "Rapture."

Let's be clear here: "Rapture" is not a book about sex. At least, it's not only about sex, which seems to disappoint some readers, given the premise. It's also a book about relationships between men and women, about misunderstandings that can occur between them, about love and intimacy, about distance and disappointment. It's essentially about the things that can go right and wrong in a relationship, and about how very different one person's perspective can be from another's.

As "Rapture" opens, the reader observes a rendezvous between two former lovers, now together again unexpectedly, just beginning a sexual interlude. As it progresses, we are given insights into their past from the perspective of both the man and the woman, and we can see how each interprets the same events. Sometimes their take on their shared past is similar, but other times (more often), they see it in widely disparate ways.

As the act progresses towards its inevitable conclusion, the story takes surprising turns. While at least one aspect of the ending is somewhat predictable (how could it not be?), the tone and mood established by Minot's tale at that point give even that a new angle. What would likely be a trite and pithy conclusion in most authors' hands becomes refreshingly new again in Minot's treatment of it.

When all is said and done, "Rapture" is an insightful look at relationships and modern attitudes about love and intimacy, and at how sex can color one's view of these things in surprising ways. It is not intended to titillate its readers, but rather, to communicate to them. It's not a particularly happy book, nor is it sad. It is, however, a compelling story, elegantly told, and unremorsefully observant. Minot proves her skills here, both as a storyteller and as a canny observer of human nature.

Rating:
Summary: Sex Scene as Backdrop
Review: Rapture, a novella which explores the love relationships of its two characters, uses what is probably the final sexual encounter between them as a backdrop. Kay and Benjamin, these former lovers both rehash their relationship, and others, in their minds while in bed together. This novella really is not about the sex, it's about the relationship, why it failed, whose fault it was. This one is brief, but I still find myself thinking about the characters, who they remind me of, who was the more deplorable. Rapture is an interesting exploration of current sexual mores and relationships.

Rating:
Summary: Why not to take an old lover back into your bedroom
Review: Susan Minot wrote one of my favorite books ever: Evening. The lyrical writing and the sad story were stellar. Rapture, too, is full of lyrical writing, and again it's a sad story, but this latest book just didn't move me the same way Evening did.
It's an old story (told in a very brief book, not much over 100 pages): two old lovers who managed to hurt each other repeatedly and badly in their past affair, meet again and fall into bed. The whole story is book-ended between the beginning and conclusion of that sexual act that was unspoken till Bill Clinton turned it into dinner table conversation. And it points out again how different are the meanings that men give to sex, compared to that given by women. She is dreamy and reminiscent, worshiping by her ministrations, remembering mostly the good times. He, in contract, is detached and focused on other things, remember what a cad he was and how much pain they gave each other. Through the device of alternating interior monologues, Minot has these two people, Kay and Benjamin, recall their past and all the events that have led to this moment. They never say a word to each other until the end of the book, when their differences again become agonizingly apparent.
It's good, it's revelatory, it's beautifully written. It explores the depths of an emotional relationship more deeply than I think I've ever seen done before. But the distance of the people is somehow passed on to the reader, and I felt just that: distanced.

Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: Susan Minot's male characters have always been a mystery. They've obsessed and enthralled and ultimately disappointed her heroines, but we were always left confounded by them. I am thinking mostly of the love interests in Folly and Evening. We only find out through the casual discussions of disinterested characters that these guys are heartless. Finally, we are in the mind of one of these flighty males, and I for one am relieved to know what he's thinking. I understand him better than I thought I would. In that way, Rapture as a whole is insightful and comforting with its universal pain type theme. My only objection is that the whole time they are engaged in an act to give HIM pleasure, and it is in fact only the female who is transported by this, going so far as to call it "worship" (had to stop myself from throwing the book at this point). It heightens unnecessarily the degradation and the disappointment that the woman is facing. However, I really enjoyed this book, and struggled with the star rating. And for once it was nice to know what the man in a Susan Minot book is thinking. He wasn't such a mystery after all. In fact, I recognized myself in him. And of course that is the beauty of this novella- that we will recognize ourselves in both characters.

Rating:
Summary: Light on titillation, heavy on introspection
Review: The book is based around a single sex act, but the majority of text focuses on both Kay and Benjamins' thoughts as the sexual encounter is going on. They go back in time and remember their own thoughts and feelings toward each other, and as the book progresses each of them seems to be going in different directions emotionally, only meeting up physically in chance encounters along the way. Kay doesn't love him, then she does. Benjamin loves her, then he doesn't.

It is a depressing book, you get the impression that they are isolated within their own thoughts, yet all they want is someone to truly understand them. They are looking for love, but accepting sex as a viable alternative.