The Word "Desire" [Hardcover]

Rikki Ducornet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

Twelve startlingly original stories about erotic desire. Each story focuses on a pivotal erotic moment in the lives of men and women who narrate them. Only a few are overtly sexual in content, but each explored the many strange reverberations that occur when desire is present, whether acted upon or kept inside.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the short stories of Rikki Ducornet, desire takes on many forms: an ivory chessboard, the Stations of the Cross, a fleeting glance at an unknown woman. And it happens in many different times and places, from turn-of-the-century Mexico to 1930s upstate New York. The 12 stories collected in The Word "Desire" examine the many aspects of passion: betrayed love, cowardly love, transcendent love--they're all here in Ducornet's erotic universe, described in rich, lyrical prose.

From Library Journal

The author of Phospor in Dreamland (LJ 10/15/95) here displays her linguistic mastery to fine effect. The 12 stories, set in an array of locales and historical periods, depict variations of erotic longing. Ducornet's characters?not all of them human?endure moments of exquisite or tortuous passion. In the haunting "The Neurosis of Containment," a repressed Thirties spinster suddenly finds (or imagines) herself cavorting with dark angels in a Hudson River manor garden. The young Mexican priest in "The Foxed Mirror" loses heart and soul to a wild artist spinning children's tops on his own flesh. In "Wormwood," a little girl at her grandfather's deathbed is startled by the secret sensuality of a grotesque carving. The title story explores graphically the self-annihilations of physical love. Distinguished by evocative language and poetic imagery, these sophisticated, clever tales belong in most collections of literary fiction.?Starr Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 193 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805051732
• ISBN-13: 978-0805051735
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,000,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book One Must Own, September 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Word 'Desire' (Paperback)

The only way I can find to write about Ducornet's lovely short stories will sound willy nilly metaphoric, and perhaps my language will shilly shally in an attempt to shed light on this exemplary work. In fact, the author of "The Phosphors of Dreamland" and others has found her form (the short story) and created a perfect little "pillow book." This book is at once sacred and profane-- rich and poor and a potpourri of languages real and impossible and peoples'--mythological, desirable--of crimes heinous and miraculous. It's unfortunate I am not in a position as an individual to more than extol "The Word: Desire" as one of the best "english language" books written in contemporary times-- certainly one of the single best examples we have of the fable of the avante garde and a meditation and tome so vital that in this pluralistic millenial time Ducornet has succeeded in producing a form of synthesized manna in the desert of postmodern literature.

This author has finally come of age and this book is pure art. I suggest young poets and writers read her earlier books as companion pieces to this one if only to plunder the spoils of a rich capacity to enrich and drench language, and to know when to mean, and to know when to refrain, and when to not mean. This approaches and engulfs the poet's art yet never stops being rife with stories and fairy tales for the 21st century.

A book one must own.