Labyrinth of Desire: Women,Passion,and Romantic Obsession FROM THE PUBLISHER
Think of Torch Songs and the Tango. Think of films such as Casablanca and The English Patient, of novels such as Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. Think of romantic, obsessive love, the hot bed of passion we fall into, the emotion we, mistakenly, think of as true love. This is the subject of Rosemary Sullivan's provocative and fascinating new book Labyrinth of Desire.
Rosemary Sullivan explores the many stories upon which women base their understanding and desire for romantic love, tracing the threads through literature, mythology, film, and personal anecdote. What emerges is a beautifully woven fabric, both intricate and detailed, simple yet resonant.
Beginning with her own telling of a love story, Sullivan describes a young woman who chooses to escape to Mexico from her unfulfilling and mundane life. Ensconced in a run-down hotel, she meets an artist at a local gallery, falling into a passionate love affair that begins well and ends -- as so many do -- badly. Sullivan then deconstructs this fictional story, skillfully peeling back the layers of meaning to look at what is really happening to this woman. Is love really the search for another, or is it the search for the missing half of ourselves? Why do women in love so often become shadow artists -- attaching themselves to a creative male rather than fulfilling their own creative destinies? Why do women so often offer themselves to the kind of love that can only be destructive?
Whether she is exploring the story of French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and her lover Jean-Paul Sartre, or the poet and novelist Elizabeth Smart whose life was fuelled by an insatiable love, or Mexican painter Frida Kahlo whose many self-portraits tell of her own entrapment in love, Sullivan's graceful writing and intimate knowledge of the subject bring these stories to life and ask the question: Why do women love as they do?
SYNOPSIS
Poet Sullivan looks at literature, film, biographies, and autobiography as a window into the nature of romantic obsessive love. Along the way, she discusses the stories of Simone de Beauvoir, Elizabeth Smart, Frida Kahlo, and others. She argues that too often, the reality of obsessive love is an inevitable disillusionment with Don Juans who use their power to control women's lives and subsume their identities. However, the nature of the yearnings of obsessive love should tell women something about the nature of themselves. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
FROM THE CRITICS
Bonnie Burnard
This thoughtful examination of romantic love is a series of timeless, cautionary clues for the young women who have not succumbed to it, a consoling touchstone for women who find themselves in the heart-scorching heat of it, and a knowing nod, a regard for those quiet women among us who carry in their hearts that thing we call, so mistakenly, a past.
Quill & Quire
Rosemary Sullivan takes an unwieldy, wild subject and not only describes wonderfully its excruciating emotions, but unravels them with a marvelous dignity.
Montreal Gazette
A tour de force on the subject of romantic obsession...a cleverly crafted and beautifully written distillation of Sullivan's reflections, life experience, and ongoing discussions with friends, as well as her analyses of literary and historical relationships.
Toronto Globe andMail
Sullivan is an elegant, subtle writer....This is a clever, intriguing book, one that will fuel...conversations and the imaginations of women.
Publishers Weekly
Why do smart, sensitive women turn into lemmings at the sight of some Don Juan, throwing themselves over the cliffs of love like self-destructive fools? They're not fools, Sullivan argues, and far from destroying themselves, women use these "love objects" very deliberately, if not consciously. Sullivan poet, biographer and English professor at the University of Toronto develops this idea in an original and disarming manner. She presents a love story of her own design involving a lone woman in a foreign town, a dark and stormy artist lover and a horrible ending, leaving the world in ashes. Then she deconstructs the whole tale, teasing out its truths. The Werther male, the "demon lover"/Heathcliff, the solipsist/narcissist male who finds "S I N" or "Safety in Numbers," the Jean Rhys-ian woman so "adept at the broken heart" they're all here. And while Sullivan explores differences between the sexes in the way males and females love, she acknowledges that there's a universality in the obsessive love experience. Plunging into a passionate obsession lets humans release control and explore unknown depths within themselves. In the end, they may be shattered and alone, but out of that loneliness can come new understandings. Sullivan's cultural references Frida Kahlo, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras are right on target for any woman who's ready to (re)question the role of love in her life. Agents, Jan Whitford and Jackie Kaiser. (Feb. 1) Forecast: This Canadian bestseller is an obsessive read not academic, but not self-help, either. Bound to interest a wide range of book-buying women Ms. readers, NPR listeners, Utne fans and reading clubbers it should do well. After all, who hasn'thad an intense love affair they're still fixated on? Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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