User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
she blows, and her thoughts never wander far from misguided contemplation of her object of affection. he gets blown, and his thoughts capture the various rationalizations of a self-absorbed, self-important cad. should blow jobs really be this tortuous? this short novel never really gets beyond its central conceit, and the basic lameness of the Longest Blowjob Story Ever becomes increasingly, depressingly apparent.
this could have been good. the complicated feelings involved in post-break-up sex is one that most folks can relate to - all the unresolved problems and unrealized goals are a potentially fascinating subject. and yet the protagonists are depicted in a way that makes the reader less than interested in empathizing - a real lost opportunity there. i found the privileged, deluded characters to be distinctly boring and nothing was learned. if anything, i would have preferred thoughts more realistically grounded in the act itself, at least that would have allowed for some genuine amusement. after all, this is basically a guy getting head from a gal as their thoughts roam around, and so stretching it out until it becomes a lengthy and strenuously studied recounting of two unfulfilled lives turns a prosaic act into something very pretentious. the author's central idea soon wore thin and there was certainly no satisfaction at the end.
worst bj ever?
Rating: really liked it
I tried. I really did. I tried for thirty-seven pages (the book is only 115 pages long) but I decided to throw in the kaafiyeh. I figured I'd go buy some birdseed and feed the sparrows out back or something, as sort of an expiatory gesture for having wasted as much time as I did reading this far in a clueless novel. I don't know why I picked this book up. Maybe because I believed the author would have something to say about rapture, which is an interesting psychological state. Maybe because her surname means "kitten" in French; I figured this would mean she would try harder to write intelligently. After thirty-seven pages, the only memorable thing was a funny quotation by Oscar Wilde she had one of her characters remember. It's a love triangle. A very boring, very pedestrian love triangle. Engaged man who owes his fiancee quite a great deal falls in love (if it is even that) with a coworker. The author tries to excuse the pedestrian nature of the writing and the pedestrian scenario by having her characters do things like make love under pink mosquito netting in an exotic location (while they're on set). This does not work. No way. They might as well be lapping up each other's concupiscent curds in the bathroom at the nearest Burger King. At least there might be some interesting graffiti to read there, as the reader's attention wanders off from the mental drivel that passes for insight and introspection in this novel. Scilicet, try these few sentences: "He'd fallen in love with someone else and suddenly she was crucial to him. Her body was what he needed. He couldn't help it." There are italics there but I'll spare you the unnecessary emotional straining that might cause; you might rupture something with all that sincerity and urgency. Your iris can be herniated. Did you know that? Well damn. Might happen here with all these torrid italics. I find this sort of writing literally mindnumbing. I could feel my mind falling asleep like a foot that you've curled under your ass while you're watching television, that half-assed, potato chip-eating yoga you do on the couch: "She was aware that she was responding, in part, to the effect of touch. Touch had a particularly compelling quality when it came from a person who's been away for a long time." This novel (or novella) is on auto-pilot. Anything is fair game to say to fill up the page. I'm surprised she didn't write, "The sun rose, and she realized that when the sun rises it goes higher in the sky. She wondered at the oddness of that." You know a novel's bad when you start hearing the words the characters speak in a sort of Simlish, when you start wishing this were The Sims, instead of a pretentious novel with nothing to say but BUY ME. More dumb bunnies living charmed lives in New York who don't know what to do with themselves. Even though they have money and live in New York. When did Knopf become the Dumb Bunny Ranch? Start midsentence here: "...and under that pink mosquito net he'd felt that he'd very possibly found the woman of his life." I think it was the fellatio scene that ruined it for me. I think that's why I stopped reading. She has this scene where she panders by putting a little sliver of male pornography in the mind of the woman giving the blowjob, because she's having trouble keeping interested as she's doing this. And that's when the lighbulb (one of the squiggly, coiled, energy-efficient type) in my brain came on. And I realized this IS ME. This is how I feel reading this book. She should have just stopped sucking. The way I just stopped reading. It's really just a Harlequin romance in Knopf's clothing. Don't be fooled by the Joan Didion blurb. Joan probably only made it to page eight.
Rating: really liked it
This is a novel which examines a romantic relationship from both the woman’s and the man’s perspective. The catch to this book is that the whole story occurs over the course of a single sexual interlude between the pair. The book is written in brief passages that alternate between the female and the male points of view. It is not a great story. It is not a bad story. The writing is not great, nor is it bad. The story is suggestive but not graphic.
My guess is that the author had the idea of writing a story that takes place entirely during one sex act, but she found that there just isn’t enough framework to drive an entire novel. Some of her insights on relationships are quite perceptive, but this would have been better as a short story or as part of a larger book.
Rating: really liked it
It seems most reviewers were only able to focus on one aspect of this book and then, to either dismiss the sanctity of the act and view it as an immature, horny 15 year old would or to become enraged and then analyze only that portion of the book rather than the story in it's entirety. Shame, they really missed out.
Think about it...you meet someone and they become the highlight of your day, their love is now a marker of what came before and what followed after. You adore them, worship them in your own way, and can't imagine a world that they don't exist in. And years later, you are no longer recognizable to each other. Where did that love go? What happened to all the hope, respect and affection you once held and saw reflected back to you? Was it ever real or did you just make them up to hurt yourself?
Here are two people destined to fail and yet, you want to root for them. Two people - one a cheater who only feels through another's eyes and the other disillusioned within her own reality, completely devoid of emotional accountability - but I still wanted them to recapture what they once had. I wanted them to get over their crap and find their happy ending. And yes, the story is told over the course of a single, sexual act and that's what made it so profound. That two people can be so entwined in an act of communion, so intimate, and yet both couldn't be further from each other. Benjamin swimming in his guilt, his realization that this woman was never love, but a woman who saw him the way he'd always wanted to be seen and
that's what he loved. Kay moves between the lack of all the feelings she wants to feel but is unable and her desire to never feel again, especially not for this man. In fact, the only way she can be close to Benjamin and permit herself to show affection is to remove her identity completely and envision herself as a whore fulfilling a need.
Sad and ugly as it all is, it's honest. Props where props are due.
Rating: really liked it
I'm shocked at the average rating! This book is an unforgettable piece of writing
artistry, complex, erotic, tragic, and reflective all at the same time.
Rating: really liked it
I'm a sucker for a sales table at a bookstore, and am always willing to take a chance on a book by an author who has already had rave reviews for a previous book. I should, however, learn to pass by the books where all the comments on the jacket are for the previous book, and not the one I'm picking up, so that I can miss such duds as Susan Minot's Rapture.
::: Benjamin and Kay :::
Rapture actually takes place in a single afternoon; two ex-lovers, Benjamin and Kay, have met for lunch and end up in bed together. During the course of the longest and most clinical session of oral sex I've ever read about, the two reflect on their pasts and their current view of their relationship, such as it is. Benjamin is an independent filmmaker with one movie to his credit, and Kay was the production designer on the movie.
During their time together on the movie, Benjamin began the relationship with Kay, even though he had a rich fiancee, Vanessa, back at home in New York. Convinced that he was no longer in love with Vanessa, he stayed with her nonetheless because of her financial support and emotional forbearance, but felt as if he was falling in love with Kay.
Kay knew about Vanessa, but had the affair with Benjamin anyway, and then spent years trying to work out her feelings for him and how to move past him, occasionally running into him and sleeping with him along the way. During the afternoon in which Rapture takes place, Kay and Benjamin explore their innermost thoughts about each other and themselves internally while the excruciatingly long sex act takes place.
::: Fifth Grade Health Class Was Sexier :::
The conceit of the novel starts with the first paragraph, which I'm assuming is supposed to shock and titillate the reader. Look! She's performing oral sex on him! And they are thinking about things! In all honesty, it was the most boring sex act I think that has ever been written, and I got through the book (a quick read at only 116 pages, thankfully) by occasionally calling out to my [ex-]husband, "Page 75!" and he would ask "Are they done yet?" That's a sorry state of affairs for a book that is supposed to be centered on this one act, isn't it?
Compounding the astonishingly boring sex are the stream-of-consciousness inner ramblings of two of the most self-absorbed and stereotypical characters ever to inhabit the pages of a book. Benjamin is your typical skunk of a man: cheating on his fiancee, leading on another woman, and then, as if that isn't enough, once the fiancee leaves him as well, he starts partying hard with tons of one-night stands. Just in case the reader was confused about what a snake he is, you know, especially considering that he isn't above sleeping with Kay or Vanessa, even though he's not with either one of them, Minot throws in a story about climbing up a fire escape to some co-ed's room at 2 AM, sleeping with HER and then being incensed that she left him a note about being used, because she should have KNOWN any guy coming to her room at 2 AM was there to use her. Drive that point right into the ground!
Kay is also stereotypical, channeling all her hopes for a real relationship into whatever occasions she manages to sleep with Benjamin, and viewing this particular afternoon as an expression of her love for him akin to worship. The most involvement I had in either of the characters was my desire to grab this girl by her hair, slap her silly, and ask why on earth she would be attracted to this loser, much less sleep with him.
However good her previous novels may have been, Minot has totally missed the mark with Rapture. I can't remember the last time I was so happy to finish a book and know I'd never have to read it again.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www1.epinions.com/review/Raptu...
Rating: really liked it
This is a small, slim book that you can (and should) read in an afternoon. The entire plot takes place during a very long and tiring act of fellatio between two people, while each character has flashbacks to past moments in their relationship. The two, Kay and Benjamin, are back in bed together one afternoon after several months of no contact with each other. They first slept together while working on a movie in Mexico, but Benjamin was engaged to another woman who he had been dating for 11 years, and despite the fact that was lovesick for Kay (and was actively having sex with her), he couldn't leave his fiance Vanessa. He eventually does, but the timing never works out, and Kay and Benjamin have never been a real couple. In bed that afternoon, Kay feels a mystical union with Ben, while Ben feels guilty and hollow. Then, Ben...comes...and the book kind of ends. This book would have been boring if a) It had been longer and b) If Susan Minot weren't so excellent at describing the way people behave and feel in intimate relationships. The book is relate-able for anyone who's experienced lust, doubt, fear, and security in an intimate relationship...so pretty much everyone.
Rating: really liked it
A blowjob. The entire story takes place during the course of a blowjob. Two ex-lovers reunite for lunch- and she ends up going down on him in the bedroom. Minot alternates between the inner dialogue of each person (the sucked and the suckee) and we see how disconnected they are from each other even though they're connected by this most intimate physical act. Is this just another example of how nonchalant and irrelevant the blow job has become? Is the modern equivalent of kissing really now oral sex? Well- probably not. Minot's prose flows relatively smoothly- although I never completely got in a groove with it. That could've just been me- as I was terribly stressed and anxious while reading. She managing to keeps things moving and interesting by injecting back story wherever appropriate. Nicely done. An interesting little book.
Rating: really liked it
Oh Susan Minot, I love your writing so much. You are so smart and so thoughtful and deep, but this book .... not for me. First of all, this slim 1-sitting novel takes place over the course of a single sex act between two on-again, off-again lovers and the details, while not graphic, were disconcerting. Secondly, the lovers were not very likeable. Normally that would be OK with me if there were great character or plot development, but this is more of a rumination so I needed to like the ruminators (if that's a word). I'll come back to this author I love, but, a little bit icky.
Rating: really liked it
Forgettable.
5/10
Rating: really liked it
Susan Minot’s book titled Rapture is the story of a man named Benjamin and a woman named Kay who had an affair. The story takes place over the course of a blowjob. Ben was engaged to Vanessa, but falls out of love with her; after being with her for 11 years, he meets Kay while doing a job in Mexico. They fall for each other. After months of no involvement, they meet for lunch and Kay gives Ben a blowjob. Flashbacks throughout the text provide the backstory in which we hear Kay and Ben’s side of the story. What Kay tried to break off after returning to New York is what Ben won’t let go. What she thought was nothing but casual has become very serious to her. The conclusion reveals just how disconnected these ex-lovers are despite their physical connection over the course of oral sex; furthermore it reveals the many issues that can take place in a relationship and the many possible misunderstanding between lovers.
The setting is immediately revealed. Even before we know the characters of the story, we know that there’s a man in a woman’s bed that he hasn’t been in in over a year but it is familiar to his past. The actions are immediately revealed: within the 1st paragraph it reads, “eyes closed, face slack, he might indeed have been dead save for the figure also naked embracing his lower body and swiveling her head in a sensual way” (Minot 3). The pacing and the straightforwardness of the text can somewhat throw readers off. The confusion that this pacing can create is similar to the confusion of a fast paced relationship like that of Ben and Kay. Minot addresses the many issues and misfortunes of love; she addresses the pain and thought provoking confusion it can cause individuals in search of true love. “One minute he was watching Kay’s shiny eyes in a mob of people and six weeks later he was knocking on the ocher door… waking her, to ask if he could come talk to her….which he didn’t say was the fact that he couldn’t stay away from her” (Minot 15). While Ben appears to be in love with Kay back in time, over the course of this blowjob, Kay is ignorant to the fact that Ben has lied about Vanessa; he’s trying to win her back.
Ben and Kay are reminiscing in 2 very similar, yet different worlds that reveal how distant these lovers are despite their physical closeness in proximity. When Kay and Ben saw each other at the Christmas party Kay talked to Ben with the hopes of discussing them and furthermore, love. Ben refused to talk about them; he stated that she was out of his mind. This raises the question of whether it was really love or not that they felt for each other. I argue that it definitely was no love that Ben possessed for Kay, rather lust and an escape. He loved Vanessa. On page 113 Ben thinks if he has any good left in him since “it had all burst into flames when he’d not been able to change his life for a person he loved”. That person was Vanessa. He’d not been able to leave Kay alone and get over his lust for her in order to love his fiancée.
Rating: really liked it
I know a book this small is meant to be read in one sitting, with a cup of tea or something. I read it on breaks at work, and ended up not reading it for a week or more as work got too busy for me to take breaks.
I found this book very well observed. A lot of the emotions described felt familiar. The language in some spots was quite lovely as well. For these two reasons, I gave the book three stars.
Yet I did not care. Whenever I was reading this book, I could not stop feeling that these two characters were terribly self-involved and in some ways uninteresting. I think even if I did attempt to read this in one sitting I would have become too exasperated with these people to do so.
Rating: really liked it
Listen, I really like the other Susan Minot books I've read--in fact,
Evening is one of my favorites of all time--but this one blows, not to put too fine a point on it. I mean, it's composed entirely of the reminiscences two boring and selfish people have while the woman is giving the man a blowie for old time's sake. (For the record: how long can you suck a dick before you get lockjaw? Probably not as long as it took to read this turd.) I'm being crass because this book doesn't deserve better. What was homegirl thinking when she wrote this?
Rating: really liked it
I've read Minot's collection of short stories, Lust; her novel, Evening; and now this. This was definitely the most difficult to get through. I think Minot's strongest writing lies in her short stories. Nothing was driving the plot except the most drawn out blow job of all time, save for a few intermittent rests when Kay got tired. No kidding about not sympathizing with the characters. I hated Benjamin, although sometimes I saw glimpses of myself in Kay. Overall I wouldn't recommend this book. Maybe give Minot's short stories a shot.
Rating: really liked it
RAPTURE is a short novel that tells the story of a relationship, narrated alternately by the male and female characters. What is unusual here is that while the back story covers several years, the front story unfolds over the unspecified time it takes for her to give him a blow job. Minot is truly skilled in writing about sex and getting at male/female attitude differences. But the conceit here didn’t hold up for an entire novel. In many ways this felt to me like a long short story.
