An Exotic,

Erotic Tale

BY FRANCESCA SUSANNA

ureole is a book for the
brave ones. What is done
here is simply not done.

It is like a many-tiered tiramisu
wedding cake, delicious and rich,
each layer revealing something
new, lush, sensuous. It is not a
novel exactly, nor really a book of
short stories. It is more a series of
erotic etudes, each one powerful
and beautiful like a very first kiss.
Read as a novel, Aureole
fails utterly. It is easy enough for
a writer to say, “Oh I meant to do
that,” when what they are doing
is not entirely successful. Aureole

Can you afford to ignore it?

has almost no plot, and the people
are flat and pretty. This is espe-
cially true ofAnju, the beautiful
girl from India, who comes as
alive as the statue at the Met with
which the narrator identifies her.
She appears in the section called
“Anju Flying Streamers After.”
She seems based on, or at least
suggested by, a real person,
Bhanu Kapil, a friend of Maso’s.
Anju is “like the sweet apple,
Anju-...Anju grasping beauty/
Anju buming/ Anju swaying,
incense, all is sweetness..."
But who exactly is

Anju? She has been completely
romanticized right out of humani-
ty to the point of petrification, a

statue of an Indian goddess found
in the Met. Ifthis is the whole
experience, the narrator’s whole
understanding of her — she does-
n’t even get a personality! — what
does that say about the narrator?
Nothing, because the narrator is
bereft of all character and person-
ality as well, so the ruminations
on Anju do not reflect on anyone,
lover or beloved

Aureole is experimental
and sexual. The pieces are formed
by the language, by Maso’s love
of language. The sentences do all
the work. They don’t describe the
feeling or the place or the person;
they evoke it, they are it.
Language makes a concrete
appearance as a dictionary of
French slang from which two
young women read as they make
love. They learn that they live-in
the Corkscrew House (the lesbian
world) and that their breasts are
little shock absorbers. Images are
given to the reader in close, tight
shots in grainy black and white —
lentils, a hand, an apricot.

.HlV

Vermont AIDS Hotline

 

In interviews as well as
in her work, Maso embraces her
role as an experimental writer
without flinching. She deliberate-
ly writes to shatter the conven-
tions of fiction such as character,
plot and description. “A work of
fiction should be a genuine expe-
rience,” she said in an interview
several years ago. All/3016 is an
experience oflonging and desire,
specifically a woman’s desire,
which is so often shadowed by
the idea that desire in a woman is
unseemly, improper, something to
be kept hidden. A

Parts of Aureole are
more poetry than prose, other
parts are prose-like but never pro-

_ saic. One section, “Dreaming

Steven Lighthouse Keeper,”’is
written in the style and rhythm of
a comic sailor’s ditty, about a

 

solitary man whose children have
drowned in the sea, whose wife is
gone, and who spends his days
masturbating to thoughts of the
beautiful women in Provincetown
having sex together. The song is
dark, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

Aureole is infused with a
rosy, golden light and it is this
light, the aureole, that Maso
explores without ever getting to
the heart of the matter. In her
preface, which will hopefully be
removed should there be any later
editions, Maso tells us that that’s
what she meant to do.

It would be a mistake to
read Aureole as a novel, let alone
in one sitting. It is best taken in
small bits, read over the course of
time, a month or even a year.
And, like a big tiramisu cake, it
should be shared in bites, with a
lover. V

Francesca Susanna lives in
Burlington.

HIV/AIDS PROGRAM infg

 

To learn
more about:

- HIV testing

- Benefits of
knowing
your HIV
status

- Treatment,
support and
counseling
opflons

Cali Vermont
AIDS Hotline:

1-800-
882-

 

HEALTI IY
\’ER.\l().\TERS

O10

1.800.882.AlDS AIDS

TTY 1.800.319.3141