Gordon
A Novel
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Louisa is a clever, self-reliant woman who has just been discharged from her duty as an officer in the British Army during World War II. In a London pub one afternoon she meets Gordon: a slight, peculiar psychiatrist with queer eyes and a strange charisma. Within an hour, Louisa has been sexually conquered by him on a garden bench. So begins an affair in which Gordon compulsively violates Louisa’s body and psyche, while Louisa matches his onslaughts with an insolent submission. As their entanglement deepens, Louisa finds a heady emotional satisfaction beneath the humiliation that Gordon inflicts, and comes to a new understanding of her troubled history and the self that has emerged from it.
Originally published under a pseudonym in 1966, Gordon was banned in England and Germany for its frank sexual content, and even today it remains provocative in its fearless probing of the boundaries of consent and submission.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published pseudonymously in 1966, Templeton's first novel was banned in England for its sexual content and found an underground following when it was picked up by the notorious Olympia Press two years later. Templeton (The Darts of Cupid) offers a compelling portrait of a woman in postwar London who falls into a submissive relationship. Louisa is the soon-to-be-divorced 28-year-old narrator who gets picked up at a pub by an imperious stranger. She isn't sure how she feels about this enigmatic, chilly, inquisitive man who shows little emotion and forgoes conventional courtship rituals, taking her to his back garden and to her unexpected pleasure summarily ravishing her. The stranger turns out to be what else? a psychiatrist, Richard Gordon, who continues to anticipate Louisa's thoughts and erotic needs. Gordon has increasingly rough sex with Louisa, holding her in his erotic thrall while remaining aloof throughout the affair. Louisa is entranced with his effect on her and increasingly obsessed with him. The unlikely erotic interludes are intriguing, and Templeton adds a delicious bit of comedy when Gordon and Louisa attend a dinner party as a couple. The idea of a coldly omniscient psychiatrist feels dated, and some of Gordon's psychoanalytic observations are bound to strike readers as unintentionally parodic; he virtually reads Louisa's mind and endlessly prompts her with his impassive "go on." Louisa's predicament, however, is believable and captivating. Templeton's study of submission is psychologically acute, and she brings the couple's oblique power struggle to a fascinating climax.
