|
Also
available in French
|
Caracole (1985)
In French caracole means "prancing";
in English, "caper." Both words perfectly describe this
high-spirited erotic adventure by a writer whose novels
possess the athletic grace of grand ballet. In Caracole,
Edmund White invents an entire world where country gentry
languish in decaying mansions and foppish intellectuals
exchange lovers and gossip in an occupied city that resembles
both Paris under the Nazis and 1980s New York.
To that city comes Gabriel, an
awkward boy from the provinces whose social naïveté
and sexual ardor make him endlessly attractive to a variety
of patrons and paramours. Together with his bewitching lover,
Angelica, Gabriel navigates a glittering labyrinth of power
and betrayal, snobbery and desire, in a novel that suggests
a pas de deux between Nabokov and
Balzac.
|
