Adèle

by Mary Flanagan

Adele Louisante, as Sylvester named the exquisite creature he rescued from slaughter in a Pyrenean village, was a paradox of fetid smells and delicate perfections. To protect and tend her, Sylvester summoned to Paris his sister Blanche from England. Mary Flanagan is the author of "Bad Girls".

Genres: Fiction, Erotica, Queer

300 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Mary Flanagan (1943) is novelist and short-story writer, born in Rochester, New Hampshire, educated at Brandeis University. She moved to Britain in 1969, and the expatriate perspective she employs in some of her work has earned her the inevitable comparisons with Henry James and Wharton. Flanagan is, however, a resolutely contemporary writer, as her debut collection of stories, Bad Girls (1984), proved. She has been praised for her skill with the shorter form, in which she displays subtlety, irony, neat plotting, and stylistic economy. Her novels Trust (1987), a study of the relationships of two women and two men, and the modern Bildungsroman Rose Reason (1990) are, by contrast, large in scope and sprawling in structure, ranging over two continents and long timespans. With the whimsical, sometimes surrealistic short fictions collected in The Blue Woman (1994), Flanagan successfully returned to the form in which she made her name.

(http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages...)

Reviews

[Jutta Swietlinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary guilty pleasure ...

This book belongs to many different genres, among them adventure stories as well as erotica, and, strangely enough, it even combines different narrative styles.
The novel tells the story of Adèle, who serves Dr. Sylvester, a dubious physician, as an experimental subject in the nineteen-thirties. Everybody seems to desire the beautiful young “savage.” Also Blanche, the doctor’s inconspicuous sister, falls for her.
In the framework story, Journalist Celia turns to crime in order to trace Adèle’s path sixty years later – only to fall under the spell of mysterious Adèle herself, many years after her death …
This novel will redefine the concept of sexuality as you know it. It’s often shocking and definitely not always politically correct, but the reader will see sensuality from a new perspective if they accept their role of voyeur, which is inevitably intended for them here.
A magnificently written, thoroughly unique, truly astonishing read.

[Katie M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bizarre historical sexual mystery. One star for keeping me reading, one more star for originality. Minus three stars for just... being... weird... and for a clunky and, on the whole, downright offensive treatment of the subject matter.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK. It is a mystery about hermaphrodite. It is a very erotic book. I thought someone had recommended this but can't imagine who!!! Makes you think about sex for fun and pleasure (love not necessarily involved) versus sex for love and one partner.

[66yoguy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. Interesting but not as eroxic as I thought it would be. The reader may see Alele as either an abomination or as an innocent child treated abominably.