Trine Erotic [Paperback]

Alice Andrews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2006

Darwinian Literature. 'Trine Erotic' is by all accounts the first novel to explore evolutionary psychology (the new "science of the mind"). This "novel of ideas" -- what author Andrews calls "evolutionary fiction," "biofiction," and "meta-seductive fiction"-- also explores why we write: to seduce (as mating strategy), to process, to heal ourselves and ultimately readers, to find meaning. It's concerned with memes -- and art and culture's ability to influence our lives. And it attempts to address the questions of love that preoccupy us, like passionate love versus companionate love, selfish love and selfless love; looking at love through a triune system, which Andrews calls: "evolution, experience, and culture." Finally, it is also a book about reconciliation of familiar polarities and dichotomies -- of spirituality and science; feminine and masculine principles/archetypes, etc.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"What a gem of a book New Paltz writer...Alice Andrews has produced in her debut novel,'Trine Erotic.'" -- Chronogram Magazine; February, 2002 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

"Trine Erotic is a beautiful structure of nested narratives. Reading it is like awakening from one dream into another. Evolutionary psychology teaches that narrative was the primal form of speech, and that we learned to speak in order to tell stories. But Trine Erotic is not just an engaging story. Alice Andrews makes skillful use of the latest scientific knowledge about the deep evolutionary roots of the modern mind to talk about human nature, women and men, love and sex. The skillful fusion of science with literature is no mean feat, and Andrews succeeds in bringing theoretical concepts to life by embedding them in the lived experience of her characters. I have included Trine Erotic on the reading lists for my undergraduate courses on Evolutionary Psychology."

-David Livingstone Smith, PhD; Director, New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology. Visiting Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of New England.

Author of "Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind"; "Freud's Philosophy of the Unconscious"; "Approaching Psychoanalysis: An Introductory Course"; and "Psychoanalysis in Question."

"'Trine Erotic' gave me a certain insight into what one might call the Woman's Point of View...Andrews's arguments rang true to life."

-Arthur Danto, art critic for "The Nation"

"Her people talk the way you wish your friends talked—-always, always analyzing, always full of fertile disagreements, seminal interpretations, high-flown, new-age, old-fashioned palaver. She knows that everything—-and love above all-—grows out of how we talk. That is what's so surprising, lively, in this novel—the combat of non-stop lucidities in which we have to make our own silence of understanding."

-Robert Kelly, author of "Red Action"; "The Garden of Distances"; and "Lapis."

"While writing in the voice of a contemporary young woman, Andrews casts a hard and brilliant light on some of the timeless mysteries of female discontent and desire."

-Marie Winn, author of "Red-tails in Love"; "Children Without Childhood"; and "The Plug-in Drug."

"We first test kindness and strength, loyalty and intelligence, health and political skill in mall flirting and later in pillowtalk and sweaty sheets..all contests that reflect the lust and blood themes of evolutionary biology, trials still encountered by a field bird or a Vassar coed. Four billion years of these contests made us what we are. Andrews's characters reflect these struggles as she sneaks under the drape between our instincts and our excuses for them. Her characters also remind us that we are not all the same even though evolution and public school might have tried to make us that way."

-James Brody, PhD; founder, Clinical Sociobiology --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (October 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1419643967
• ISBN-13: 978-1419643965
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,778,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty, wise, and wonderful: brings biology back to life !, March 20, 2002

By 

Todd I. Stark "Cellular Wetware plus Books" (Philadelphia, Pa USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trine Erotic (Paperback)

This is something brand new to me and which caught me completely by
surprise--a biologically informed love story. One of those wonderful books
that takes useful, interesting intellectual ideas and makes them real and
palpable in people's lives. The book is filled with delightfully primal
themes voiced in a very modern idiom. It doesn't just tug at your emotions,
it tugs at them through your brain by weaving a nest of stories that
interlock and share meanings.

This is not biology in the old sense of simple "animal instincts" or even
just the recent sense of selfish genes and the mathematics of human
relationship games. It is also biology informed by our modern understanding
of how we create and transmit meaning through words. The roles of the "meme"
or fuzzy unit of culture, feature prominently as conceptual undercurrents
here. Then the author takes it way beyond being a unit of culture and
illustrates by her own masterful example how it is also an agent of human
transformation.

Many people talk about how human beings are linked by their stories, but in
Trine Erotic, the author demonstrates just how fundamental a mode of
communication the story can be. Her characters reveal the deep strategies
behind their feelings and behaviors, while trying to sort them out from their
excuses for their own behaviors.

Through her own storytelling, Alice Andrews seduces the reader into layer
after layer of change in their own understanding, all the while explaining
what she is doing. This is a relatively new and interesting form of
introspective art that both inspires and teaches.

Two problems ... we aren't used to art being quite so aware of its own role,
especially in scientific terms, and we usually aren't comfortable with women
consciously cutting through the haze of erotic games to see their own
relentless Darwinian logic. It's exciting and a bit disconcerting as well to
see female sexuality both revealed and unleashed in this light.

Andrews's female leads have the terrifying but exciting freedom we wish we had,
while still being immersed in misgivings of their own making, trying to sort
out complex webs of feeling and what it all means.

Not only did I find this book a delight, but I've put it on my list of books
to read when people want to learn about how themes of evolutionary biology
can be applied to real life.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Topics I talk about with my best girlfriends BUT..., May 27, 2007

By 

Amy Norcom "amy_in_oregon" (Lake Oswego, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trine Erotic (Paperback)

... we don't talk about brownies or The Gap. Andrews explores human mating strategies from an intelligent female perspective. Sex and evolutionary psychology are the common thread in these compelling nested story lines -- our most primal urges filtered through a highly sophisticated cortex. Trine Erotic is one of a kind -- analytical, creative, seductive, profound... brilliant.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love, Sex, Truth -- A Great Read, September 11, 2005

By 

Carl Frankel (Kingston, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trine Erotic (Paperback)

I loved Trine Erotic. If D.H. Lawrence had been a woman, if Virginia Woolf had lived today, they might have come up with something like this.

In Trine, Andrews explores the realm that is bounded by desire, more precisely the realm bounded by three desires: for love, for sex, for truth. It's like an erotic variation on the true, the beautiful, and the good. Love, sex, truth. Now there's a mythic landscape for you! And Andrews explores it compellingly. She is highly sensitive to nuance, highly sensitive to the shifting shades of truth and the shifting colors of desire. To top it off she writes deftly, with real artistry. A great read.