Trine Erotic (Paperback)

~ Alice Andrews (Author) "I am awake early on a Sunday morning..." (more)
Key Phrases: conscious shock, baby theory, soft kill, New York (more...)

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

Product Description

Trine Erotic is perhaps 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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Vivisphere Publishing (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587761211
• ISBN-13: 978-1587761218
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,719,213 in Books (See Bestsellers 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 (REAL NAME)

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)

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.