In Malice, Quite Close: A Novel by Brandi Lynn Ryder (Book Review)
15/08/2011 § 1 Comment
This artistically written novel opens with the shocking and beguiling account of the seduction of a fifteen year old girl by charming but perverse Frenchman, Tristan Mourault. Years later the working class girl has been reborn into opulence as her voyeur’s most prized work of art; preserved through lies and manipulation. This story, despite to soon giving way to narration by weaker characters, exhibits an intoxicating mystery to be solved, full of elegiac eroticism, decadence, forgeries and fakes. Every chapter creates a cliff-hanger, gradually exposing the reader to more sins and secrets than Tristan alone can be guilty of.
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First Evening by Rimbaud (1854 – 1891)
She was barely dressed though,
And the great indiscreet trees
Touched the glass with their leaves,
In malice, quite close, quite close.
Sitting in my deep chair,
Half-naked, hands clasped together,
On the floor, little feet, so fine,
So fine, shivered with pleasure.
I watched, the beeswax colour
Of a truant ray of sun-glow
Flit about her smile, and over
Her breast – a fly on the rose.
I kissed her delicate ankle.
She gave an abrupt sweet giggle
Chiming in clear trills,
A pretty laugh of crystal.
Her little feet under her slip
Sped away: ‘Will you desist!’
Allowing that first bold act,
Her laugh pretended to punish!
Trembling under my lips,
Poor things, I gently kissed her lids.
She threw her vapid head back.
‘Oh! That’s worse, that is!’…
‘Sir, I’ve two words to say to you…’
I planted the rest on her breast
In a kiss that made her laugh
With a laugh of readiness….
She was barely dressed though,
And the great indiscreet trees
Touched the glass with their leaves
In malice, quite close, quite close.