S & M

An elegant exploration of language, passion, imagination and betrayal, Jeffrey DeShell's second novel is a nocturnal meditation on sexual politics and sexual exigency. Full of lyricism and wit, S&M relentlessly questions the roles language and imagination play in the construction of sexual and emotional desire.

S&M presents characters driven by the lustful pursuit of any loving other who might turn out to be a more flattering image of themselves. Through them, we suffer knowledge of our own shallowness, which is at once comical and devastating. Despite its own deceptively shiny surface, this is a book with death and resonance, with something important to say about the possibilities of becoming a self that you can live with and let live.

Stylish and stylized, DeShell's S&M is a novel for people who can still feel a frisson from reading novels.