Submission
A Novel
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2.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
You'll want to scream, but you'll be gagged. You'll want to cry, but you'll be blindfolded. You'll want to run away, but you'll be tied up. You'll have no way of begging me, I'll do what I want with you.
Now American readers can be riveted by the controversial novel that, according to The Sunday Times (London), "sent tremours through the French establishment." Sexual obsession, domination, and extreme desire drive the story of Elodie, a young married Parisian lawyer who finds herself swept up in a cycle of sadomasochistic lust.
A handsome stranger she meets in court issues her a series of instructions that she feels compelled to follow. He introduces her to sex clubs hidden in dark alleys, toys that enhance physical pleasure as well as pain, and couples whose appetites are as voracious as his. What at first seems out of character for Élodie quickly begins to shape her self-identity. As the violence of their encounters escalates, these acts become a dangerous addiction she can't break. But how far can she go and how much of her life will she risk in the process?
Based on the author's own experience, this sophisticated and captivating novel exudes the sensuality that only the French know how to deliver.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even the most slavish Francophiles will long for something a bit more substantial than the string of garter belts, dildoes and illicit sexual encounters on offer in this debut novel of sexual obsession set in Paris, a knockoff of The Story of O. Elodie is a young mother and successful lawyer whose deviant affair with a dominating colleague is allegedly based on the author's own experience. Summoned one night to the rooms of this curiously magnetic man, Elodie is transformed when he announces, "Nobody will ever treat you as I'm going to treat you," then proceeds to blindfold her, sodomize her with a mysterious foreign object and bring her to an "incredible, overwhelming" orgasm that leaves her panting for more. Then the trouble really begins for poor Elodie for all her obedience and humiliation, a "penetrating silence" is as close as she ever gets to actual penetration by the sadistic man she refers to as "Him." And though readers, for better or worse, will feel "the torture of waiting" almost as acutely as does his plaything, some will surely long for a dose of Houellebecq-ian philosophy to give these bleak encounters a little soul. As erotica, it titillates. But as literature, it feels unconsummated.
