Apparitions
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 20, 2026
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- $13.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Two nuns, and one obsessed mother, doing everything in their power to achieve communion with the one they love.
Sister Lugarda de la Encarnación takes the lash, and an unnamed mother gets down on her hands and knees – sacramental postures demanded by inscrutable men. Apparitions is a novel of ecstasy pursued, desire transmogrified into devotion, and obedience as a passionately pursued, not entirely free choice. Erotic, and suffused with painting, music, art, it’s an incantatory exploration of what it means to abandon the world, and to use your body – in pain, and in pleasure – as a way of finally coming to know the divine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Glantz (Family Tree) explores pleasure, pain, and submission in this intense dual narrative of women overcome by passion, whether for a man or for Christ. The first concerns Sister Lugarda, who is ecstatically whipped and cut by fellow nun Teresa in the name of spiritual purity. As Teresa whips Lugarda, her visions of Jesus and pious contemplations become increasingly erotic ("When will your beautiful light clothe my senses in glory?" she prays out loud, naked to the waist, while blood runs down her back). Glantz alternates this story with that of an unnamed mother in a submissive relationship with her male lover. Her daughter watches the couple through an open door, which initially unsettles the protagonist. The man is unbothered, however, and orders her to close her eyes, after which she has a vision of her daughter's gaze that "electrifies" her. The couple's twisted dynamic is upended when the daughter begins to wear trousers and spread her legs like a boy, prompting the man to object ("Girls should sit with their knees together or their legs crossed," he says). Glantz's writing is raw and vulnerable, much like the women she writes about. This complex portrait of all-consuming desire is tough to shake.
