Your Name Written on Water, winner of an international contest for erotic literature in Spanish and a bestseller in Spain, is a startling and charged exploration of desire and narcissism that reads like Carole Maso's Aureole with a twist of The Story of O. Sofia works in a gallery in Madrid, the young wife of an architect whose love for her has hardened into a passionate and destructive resentment. Her life is transformed when one afternoon, by chance, she spends her lunch hour at a public pool outside the city. There she meets Marina, a woman who is her doppelganger. They are immediately drawn together - so powerfully that Sofia feels it all may be a trick of her fevered mind - and together they forge a love that is tender as well as passionate, with an intimacy that is almost eerie. When Sofia learns Marina is leaving for a job in Rome, she sees the perfect exit from a marriage that has become tyranny. And so they go, twin fugitives after desire - but pursued as well by the specter of danger. Your Name Written on Water is a stunningly accomplished and deeply psychological novel with the charge of an erotic thriller.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A bestseller in Spain, this graphic and sensuous first novel by the pseudonymous Frei explores the outer limits of sexual pleasure and danger. When 28-year-old Sofia first met her husband, Santiago, their erotic appetites were insatiable, but over time Santiago's rapacious, possessive carnalities become brutal. When he beats her badly during sex, causing a miscarriage, she rebuffs him completely. Taking a break from her job at a Madrid art gallery, Sofia goes to a community pool where she meets a woman called Marina, who is her exact double. Quickly and wordlessly, the two women maneuver out of their bathing suits and become mutually and instantly obsessed. Their intoxicating connection verges on autoeroticism, narcissism ("How can you say Narcissus loves himself when he only wishes to satisfy his double?") and incest (they pretend to be sisters). The two run away to Italy together, where they spend six idyllic months in sexual exploration. Unable to bear existence as two separate people, they invent a woman they name Clara, who is the imaginary, amalgamated synthesis of both of them. Their erotic escapades are sometimes Ana?s Nin-like poetic fantasies, and sometimes graphic, scatological rituals. When the violently jealous Santiago tracks them down and exacts revenge for the emasculating insult of his wife's abandonment, savagery ensues. Despite the hair-raising finale and an annoying abundance of clinical anatomical terms, the book is sensual and psychologically savvy. Its interrogation of heterosexual, homosexual and transsexual desires quivers with intelligence, heat and heart. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Your Name Written On Water ($12.00 paperback original; Oct. 19; 208 pp.; 0-8021-3648-6). This intense and only occasionally risible psychodramapseudonymous Spanish author Freis first novel, and the winner of, of all things, an erotic literature competitionrecords in meticulously steamy detail the liberation of a young married woman named Sofia. Sexually brutalized by her macho husband Santiago, Sofia strikes up an acquaintance, then a passionate affair with Marina, an enigmatic beauty who is her exact physical doubleand with whom she experiences a sexual awakening that redefines all her emotions and creates its own little worlduntil the pursuing Santiago catches up to the mutually absorbed lovers. The Story of O comes to mind, as do Anas Nins perfervid fantasies. But Freis gritty little sexual horror story gets under your skin and nags away at you. Its a very specialized, very accomplished performance. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insatiable erotica!,
This review is from: Your Name Written on Water: An Erotic Novel (Paperback)
It appears that the Spaniards, like the French, are excellent at writing erotica that is both insatiable and literary. Vicente Munoz Puelle's The Arch of Desire introduced me to the aforementioned brand of erotica, and in turn helped me discover Your Name Written on Water. This beautiful novel centers on eroticism mixed with narcissism.Sofia and Santiago have an affair that is as barbaric as it is passionate. As Santiago's S&M-like lovemaking becomes all the brusquer for Sofia - to the point of causing a miscarriage - she decides that enough is enough. In her quest to find meaning in her life, she encounters Marina - a woman who is the identical vision of Sofia. What transpires is a disarming tale of tangible passion with narcissistic undertones, especially when the two women create Clara - an imaginary synthesis of the two women. There are various twists throughout the novel. Your Name Written on Water is an erotic tour de force that leaves the reader satisfied - so to speak. Irene Gonzalez Frei (pseudonym) has created a wonderful masterpiece. It doesn't surprise me that this novel became a bestseller in Spain. It's rare to find a novel that is both erotic and literary, and Frei's book quenched my thirst for such an unheard-of combination.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunted,
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This review is from: Your Name Written on Water: An Erotic Novel (Paperback)
This book hit many levels for me, and has value in many ways. First off, it is beautifully written. The writer and translater has a knowledge of language that quickly becomes poetry. Secondly, this erotica is truly original. As an author myself, I am blown away with the courage it took to write this story, which breaks many rules that commercial books seem to follow. I found a sexuality here that I can so strangely identify with, and that I haven't yet found in another book. In many ways, it is intensely pure, and not naughty at all. In fact, I think this book is shortchanged if one called it simple "an erotic novel," because the sex is a psychological feast as well as physical. And thirdly, I must add that the story itself is on my top list of favorites now.This novel is many stories: it's an updated interpretation/spin off on the narcissus myth, it seems inspired by the textbook idea of homosexuality being a form of narcisism, and it is also the sad story of a woman who creates her own idea of love in rebellion for being abused by a man. I read this book slowly because I didn't want it to end. But, thanks to the author, I am left with much to ponder...
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
art is meant to stimulate...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Your Name Written on Water: An Erotic Novel (Paperback)
Your name written on water... A beautifully written tragety, one that weaves the reader into a world that is sweet and painful. Each person who reads it will respond differently, a sign of important art; that it brings out our individual responses. This is not a book for everyone. It is a book for me. For I loved it. I laughed and cried and remembered feelings that I have had, the book took me places; some dangerous but some good. Her writing is prose-like, it has melodies that make a person want to relax into them, and yet she writes about harsh subjects, things that are dangerous, things that are cruel. This is not a book for Harlequine Romance readers. This is not a book for people who do not like to have their world view shaken up a bit. This is a book for lovers who understand that love, like life, is a two edge sword, that pleasure and pain are sometimes emeshed, and that the human experience is just that, an experience. This is a book for those who would want to take Isabel Allende one step further. For those of us that wish that "The story of O" was more lyrical. The only disappointment was that after publishing such a brave work, the author chose to use a psuedonym. Instead of celebrating her rare talent for writing strange beautiful truths, she hid behind a false name. Although it gives the reader reason to think... have I read this author before?
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