Define Books As A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4)
| Original Title: | A Spy in the House of Love |
| ISBN: | 0804002800 (ISBN13: 9780804002806) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Cities of the Interior #4 |
| Setting: | Brazil |
Anaïs Nin
Hardcover | Pages: 140 pages Rating: 3.68 | 5359 Users | 386 Reviews
Chronicle During Books A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4)
A Spy in the House of Love, whose heroine Sabina is deeply divided between her drive for artistic and sexual expression, on the one hand, and social restrictions and self-created inhibitions, on the other, echoes Nin's personal struggle with sex, love, and emotional fragmentation. Written when Nin's own life was taut with conflicting loyalties, her protagonist Sabina repeatedly asks herself, can one indulge one's sensual restlessness, the fantasies, the relentless need for adventure without devastating consequences?
Particularize Out Of Books A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4)
| Title | : | A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4) |
| Author | : | Anaïs Nin |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 140 pages |
| Published | : | January 1st 1959 by Swallow Press (first published 1954) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Adult Fiction. Erotica. Classics. Romance. Literature |
Rating Out Of Books A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4)
Ratings: 3.68 From 5359 Users | 386 ReviewsWeigh Up Out Of Books A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4)
At page 7: What on earth is this ridiculously stylised... blather?At page 30: Okay... maybe I'll finish this...At page 60: *Gets out highlighter for really lovely observational passages*At page 80: Oh god, what am I reading? When will this end? I can't stop...By page 123: Thank goodness that's over!At times the language is descriptive and lovely, like a blend of feminist Angela Carter and the most flowery of prose (maybe Wilde's in A Picture of Dorian Grey?).At others, a pretentious, run-onI know no one who evokes the extremes of emotion and physical sensation as convincingly as Anaïs Nin. Exactly that might be the problem. There is no pause in the intensity of her prose. It's arresting, yes, breathless, certainly - restless, desperate, at times despairingly hopeful, and it's all of these things at once. Her sentences never stutter before gaining momentum again. They gallop along, endlessly, with sweat on their tongues, urged on by a writer who doesn't believe in taking a breath
I was sort of sticking around to find out whether Sabina just really wanted lots of sex and all this "I am the morphing woman" thing was her sex-repressed way of justifying her sexual appetites, or if it was the other way around. Ultimately, I suppose it doesn't really matter, and to pin it down to one or another would make the book little more than a psychological case study. Mostly, her lifestyle (and Nin's prose) seemed exhausting, and made me very happy to be in my jammies at night, cuddling
I first discovered Nin last year actually. Read a sample of her diary in a comic book anthology I own. Ended up really liking her. Thankfully my mom owns three of her books. This one being the first that was published the earliest.I wouldn't start with this book though. I feel like I made the mistake reading an authors wok in chronological order this time. Most of the times I try to do that to see how a writer writes, but I felt like I was missing something with this one. Is there a book before
"The enemy of love is never outside, it's not a man or a woman, it's what we lack in ourselves." (p118)The muddled line between love and lust, desire and detachment, infidelity and independence. This was a 30-year old woman's personal "definition" of sexual liberation, of sleeping in different beds, underneath different bodies all the whilst with a husband at home. A contradictory, an ambiguousness, it's the hand of marriage pressed hard on the base of her throat. A Spy in the House of Love was
Maybe because I expected a much simpler tale or maybe because I had higher expectations about what this book would be like, but somehow I couldn't help but feeling deceived by this story.The short summary at the back cover seemed promising enough: a haunted woman, Sabina, who is unable to remain faithful to her husband Alan. She is helplessly attracted to total strangers and finally driven into fruitless affairs which leave her feeling restless, guilty and edgy. But at the same time, she can't
Let me say right of the bat that I have a particular soft spot for poetic, beautiful writing - which undeniably this book delivered. With that said, the story was not very compelling for me and instead of being thoroughly entranced like I usually am in books with this type of language, I instead felt myself reading bits and pieces here and there when I felt in the mood. It felt to me more like a collection of vaguely resembling and interconnecting dreams than a continuous plot (which admittedly
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