Transgressions [Hardcover]

Sarah Dunant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

In Sarah Dunant's shocking and provocative new thriller Transgressions, the lines bleed between passion and violence, attraction and repulsion, pleasure and terror. Winner of England's prestigious Silver Dagger Award, Dunant presents readers with a new kind of heroine: Lizzie Skorvecky, a woman unafraid to fight back as a bizarre and intense drama escalates toward one incendiary moment of revenge.

Lizzie lives alone in a sprawling London house. Determined to get on with her life after a nasty breakup with her boyfriend, Tom, she accepts an all-consuming job translating a Czech detective novel into English. At first, Lizzie laughingly dismisses the cliches in this hard-boiled fantasy world, but then puzzling events begin to occur in her own life that mirror the fictional brutality and violence she encounters every day in her literary work.

Desperate and at a loss, Lizzie consults a local clergywoman to see if the interloper might be a poltergeist. One night, however, she awakens to a scene from every woman's nightmare, discovering that an-all-too-human culprit is toying with her sanity. In the harrowing days that follow, it takes every ounce of Lizzie's strength and cunning to match wits with the forces arrayed against her.

Controversial and darkly erotic, Transgressions brings to its readers' waking hours the distrubing fears that plague each of us in the loneliest dead of night.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sarah Dunant, a television host in London, begins and ends her poignant and powerful Transgressions with music by Van Morrison. When Lizzie Skvorecky can't find her favorite Morrison compact disc, Enlightenment, she thinks it might have something to do with the breakup of her last romance. Lizzie, the British daughter of Czech immigrants, is a translator, and her latest job is a tough Czech crime novel involving torture and rape. At first she writes off the weird things happening around her to either her ex-lover or the influence of her work. But soon Lizzie realizes she's in serious trouble, stalked by a vicious rapist, and not even the police can protect her. So she takes things into her own hands. By the time the book ends with Morrison singing "The Healing Has Begun," you'll know you've been on a rough and memorable trip.

From Publishers Weekly

There's a lot of showy exposition about the complicated ebb and flow of sexual power and violence, but, in the end, this thriller is about cheap thrills. Dunant, author of the popular Hannah Wolfe mystery series (Under My Skin, 1995, etc.), tells the story of Elizabeth Skvorecky. Recovering from a bad split with her live-in lover, Lizzie hunkers down in her London mansion to translate a trashy Czech police thriller. At first she resists the tale, internally railing against its images of mutilated female torsos and women chained up as dogs. But she gradually discovers that the misogynistic violence has "burrowed its way under her skin." In fact, it makes her hot. Meanwhile, someone appears to be infiltrating her home: CDs are disappearing, possessions are moved and then the manuscript of her translation is smeared with ketchup. Her vindictive ex? A ghost? When Lizzie awakens one night to find a stranger perched on her bed clutching a hammer, she seduces him proactively and is unexpectedly, and disturbingly, aroused. But when she learns that a serial "hammer rapist" is amok, she stops congratulating herself for surviving and begins stalking her stalker, baiting him with throbbingly sadistic chapters ostensibly translated from the Czech thriller but which, in fact, she has written herself to spook the prying rapist. Dunant "quotes" long passages of both the porn thriller and Lizzie's addenda, and then dismisses them as "total crap." Presumably, Lizzie is somehow empowered by writing bad porn, but we're certainly no better for reading it. Ultimately, it's hard to distinguish between what Lizzie writes and the ill-conceived, poorly disguised appeal to prurience Dunant has penned.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 370 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060392487
• ISBN-13: 978-0060392482
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,156,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The author of the critically acclaimed Hannah Wolfe mystery series, Sarah Dunant is also well known in the United Kingdom for her work as a television host. She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not really sold on this one, July 12, 2000

By 

sallyann - See all my reviews

This review is from: Transgressions (Hardcover)

This book starts off very intriguing. Book translator Lizzie starts to notice CD's missing in her house. She thinks nothing of it as her ex boyfriend has a key to the house still. However, once he returns the key and the stereo continues to turn itself on and off and dishes move from the cupboards to the table, she begins to wonder if it's more of a poltergeist problem.

Until the night she wakes up and hears another person breathing in her bedroom.....

The story Lizzie is translating throughout the book is cheap, nasty and degrading, but I found it necessary as an explanation for Lizzie's behaviour. Despite the necessity, I still found the transcript quite boring, and it was only in retrospect that I began to believe Lizzie's emotions at the end of the story. "Mapping the Edge" is a much better book from this author.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining But Flawed, July 9, 2006

By 

A Discerning Reader (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Transgressions (Paperback)

Dunant is a pleasant writer with real skills. She does a nice job with her characterization and her plotting--unfortunately, her imagination--well, that's the flaw.

As a member of modern society, I cannot stomach the key scene of the novel. In this scene, our heroine chooses, when confronted with a rapist, to pseudoseduce him instead. Yes, she convinces herself that she controlled an otherwise horrible experience, but Dunant's describing our heroine as aroused and emotionally not affected during or after the assault is pure stupidity. Trying to see it otherwise really doesn't work.

I don't have too much of a problem with the rest of the story, and there's a good climax. Again, however, her response to her would-be rapist at the end shows Dunant hasn't quite thought it through. She needs to read a few true-crime accounts of rape to clue her into the devastation that accompanies every moment during and after that trauma. The story is an interesting concept, but I would read other Dunant novels instead of Transgressions.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you don't mind a little kink, this is an exciting read, April 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Transgressions (Hardcover)

Four months ago, Lizzie Skvorecky split from her lover Tom. Since their nasty break-up, Lizzie has thrown herself into her work, translating novels into English. Her current work is a Czech police procedural that she originally found very distasteful, but the cheap porn has since hooked her.

Recently, someone has been entering Lizzie's London flat. Little things like a Van Morrison CD have either been stolen or moved elsewhere in the house. One particular night, Lizzie awakens to see a man holding a hammer sitting on her bed. She manages to seduce the man, but later on learns about the serial "hammer rapist". Though knowing the danger she might face, Lizzie decides to turn the tables and stalk the rapist.

TRANSGRESSIONS is a novel that should have been great but falls just short of the mark. Lizzie is an interesting character, whose motives may seem strange but are well developed and comprehensible. However, the poignant story line is hampered by the intrusions of translated extracts from the Czech novel and Lizzie's own porno additions. Apparently, the talented Sarah Dunant purposely added a poorer writing quality to these sections to keep the overall flavor and authenticity of the books premise. Skip those pages (unless the reader needs a cheap thrill) and peruse the main plot because that is an intriguing cat and mouse thriller.

Harriet Klausner