From Publishers Weekly
The author of the beloved Weetzie Bat books and other popular YA titles offers a slim collection of adult stories, erotica for grown-up goth maidens and sexpots who like their tales of passion infused with witchy magic. These nine interconnected tales celebrate carnal delights and the transformative power of love, with occasional lapses into syrupy repetition, but they also peek compassionately into romances laced with themes of grief, heartbreak and renewal. A bummed-out surfer gets a second chance at happiness when he meets a beautiful woman in a wheelchair, who may or may not be a mermaid. The spirits of these lovers mythically revitalize the relationship between Sylvie and Ben, a couple whose sex life is on the skids when Sylvie's antidepressants flatten her libido. Sylvie reappears elsewhere, as the sister of a cancer patient, David, who dies in spite of a loving nurse's attempt at sexual healing. Another recurring character is Plum, who has "the gift of love": those she sleeps with meet their true love soon after. Plum is therefore always being left: in "Milagro," she shares an idyllic night with the boy she loves, only to find out he's gay; in another story she sleeps with Sylvie, allowing Sylvie to meet Ben. Plum discovers that her gift can come full circle when she wins the love of aspiring actor Elvis Dean, who has been inconsolable since his girlfriend Coco left him to become a stripper and was mutilated by a plastic surgeon. All set in Los Angeles, Block's tales feature her distinctive simplicity and sweetly sleazy downtown dreamers; the sex scenes are heady though hazy with a mystical slant that blunts the erotic edge and makes the collection palatable for hardcore romantics. (June) FYI: Nymph is Circlet Press's first hardcover title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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From Kirkus Reviews
YA novelist Block (I Was a Teenage Fairy, 1998, etc.) moves into the adult market—the very adult market—in a series of tales tied together by lyrical sex that would stir a wooden Indian.So many of these spirited sketches turn on sexual metamorphosis that readers may wonder whether Block has been boning up on Ted Hughes’s wonderful Tales from Ovid. Tom Mac (‘Mer’) is an aging surfer who has lost the urge to ride the waves until one day in the rain he meets a girl in a wheelchair, her T-shirt plastered to her breasts and her nipples hard. Her legs stay covered while they make all sorts of love short of coitus. The girl is, of course, a goddess of the sea, though we never find out whether she has a mermaid’s tail. Tom takes up surfing again, and their love life only improves. In the title piece, young Sylvie is screwing anything in reach—guys with swastikas, whatever—but is quite unhappy about her nymphomania. Then Sylvie’s best friend, Plum, a fellow poet of the slams, reveals that all the women who go to bed with her find dreamy guys and leave her for them. So shouldn’t Sylvie have shy and tender sex with Plum? Assuredly. In ‘Goddess,’ Elvis Dean’s girlfriend dumps him, then reappears dancing in a strip bar called House of Goddess—only now she has a cat’s face. Mr. Wonder, the magician owner of the House, won’t let any of his surgically altered employees leave unless a man truly loves them. Will Elvis take her back? The final story, ‘Overcoming,’ turns on Carmelita’s fantasies of transformation, which she thinks will keep her lover, Tony, from wandering. But only the fantasies bring her to orgasm, never Tony. Until . . . . Call these bedtime firecrackers. --
Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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