The Beholder

the long version

""Once upon a time, her aunt phones... Can he meet with the niece?" He is a writer, middle-aged, thoughtful, engaged in a project that involves observing and describing the female form. The niece is young, married, and beautiful, an art historian who wants to write fiction.". "An initial rapport soon turns darkly erotic. The writer recounts a charged series of trysts in which he and the young woman find themselves in a secret otherworld, both enchanted and claustrophobic, where the increasingly uninhibited lovers discard the deepest taboos. No longer merely subjects for conversation, the passions shared by the writer and the young woman - for art, storytelling, and experience - fuel a transgressive vision of love that cannot, in the end, compete with the demands of the ordered world."--BOOK JACKET.