Thrillers, Erotica

Be Mine

Name: Be Mine
Author: Laura Kasischke
ISBN: 9780156033831

by Laura Kasischke

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Overview

On Valentine’s Day, Sherry finds an anonymous note in her mailbox: be mine. As the notes continue, Sherry becomes more and more charged by the idea that she can inspire such feelings. Her twenty-year marriage is routine and she feels old, aimless, and empty now that her son is in college. When she discovers who her admirer is, she begins a wildly passionate affair with him. But her son’s childhood friend is witness to the affair, her best friend is strangely silent, and her husband is playing a disturbing game of titillation and encouragement. Soon events spiral out of Sherry’s control, threatening not only her marriage but also her son and her home. This deeply erotic thriller explores how little we know ourselves and those we live with and what we risk when we step away from our social personas and allow passion to control our lives.

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

It all starts with an anonymous Valentine's Day love note that Sherry Seymour, a Michigan community college English teacher and recent empty-nester, finds in her school mailbox. Mystified and flattered, Sherry lets her husband, Jon, in on the notes as they accumulate, resulting in a dramatic uptick in their sex life that advances in kinkiness after Sherry's son's friend tips off Sherry about the alleged identity of the note writer. An affair ensues, aided by Sherry's rental of an apartment near school (to avoid the commute between campus and the Seymour home in the country) and Jon's encouragement (her trysts excite him). But Sherry's life begins to spin out of control as she becomes more entangled with her possessive lover and learns who really wrote the notes. However, the tension Kasischke (The Life Before Her Eyes) cleverly builds throughout the narrative collapses at the book's climax, when Sherry and Jon are drawn into the aftermath of an accidental death. Save for the far-fetched ending, Kasischke has proven herself again to be a bold chronicler of dark obsession. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Laura Kasischke

Laura Kasischke is the author of two novels and three collections of poetry. Her numerous awards include the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

"Kasischke has proven herself again to be a bold chronicler of dark obsession."

Kirkus Reviews

"Kasichke (The Life Before Her Eyes, 2001, etc.) aims towards tragedy, using delicate, elegant prose to expose the psychological and moral rot that can lie beneath the most normal facade. She gets rights to the core...emotionally wrenching."

Library Journal

Twenty years after Fatal Attraction, a dead rabbit on the first page is still a red flag for a seemingly monogamous marriage. Middle-aged community college professor Sherry Seymour and her husband, Jon, are adjusting to life as empty nesters when an anonymous valentine appears in Sherry's campus mailbox. After receiving increasingly suggestive notes, Sherry begins buying new clothes and viewing each man she sees as a potential paramour. Her husband, meanwhile, becomes increasingly passionate as he fantasizes about his wife with another man. Make-believe makes way for betrayal when Sherry takes her husband's suggestions to heart and starts an affair with a colleague. Novelist and poet Kasischke (White Bird in a Blizzard) does a good job of building the domestic tension, and while an explosion is imminent, the way in which it is finally ignited comes as a surprise. Dead animals (rabbits, squirrels, a deer) litter Sherry's life, each decaying body a reminder of the passing of time and the consequences of carelessness. Recommended for larger public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/06.]-Karen Kleckner, Deerfield P.L., IL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An anonymous valentine leads a middle-aged, happily married woman into a sexual labyrinth. Sherry, an English professor at a community college in Michigan, and her software designer husband, Jon, are adjusting to being empty nesters when Sherry receives her first anonymous love note. Amused and flattered, she casually tells both her husband and her best friend Sue. As the notes continue, Sherry finds herself sexually awakened for the first time in years, and she begins masturbating to fantasies of her admirer. Meanwhile, Sherry runs into her son Chad's childhood friend Garret, who is studying car mechanics. Although the boys have not been friends for years, Sherry, feeling guilty that Garret's life holds so much less promise than Chad's, invites Garret for supper during Chad's spring break from Berkley. When the subject of Sherry's love notes comes up during the awkward meal, Garret says that his teacher Bram, who has been singing Sherry's praises in class, is probably her admirer. Sherry soon plunges into a torrid affair with Bram while Jon, titillated by the idea of Sherry taking a lover, not only allows but encourages their meetings. The only problem is that Bram didn't write the letters and Jon has been assuming that Sherry's description of her affair is a fiction she's created to fire up their own sex life. In other hands, these misunderstandings could turn into dark hilarity, but Kasischke (The Life Before Her Eyes, 2001, etc.) aims toward tragedy, using delicate, elegant prose to expose the psychological and moral rot that can lie beneath the most normal facade. She gets right to the core, whether describing Sherry's maternal sense of loss as her son pulls away from childhood orher suddenly awakened animal lust for both Bram and Jon. Unfortunately, Kasischke gives Chad, who remains only half realized, too much responsibility for a plot that falls apart at the end. Imperfect but emotionally wrenching. Agent: Lisa Bankoff/ICM

Booklist

"What makes this erotic thriller disturbing and, therefore, successful is how convincingly Kasischke renders Sherry's life and feelings so eerily normal and familiar, ensuring the unsettling portents are all but unnoticed until it is too late."

Star Tribune

"The first two-thirds of Be Mine are the most effective, as Kasischke makes the reader feel Sherry's aging female awkwardness acutely enough to identify with her descent into wanton lust. When Sherry's stand-up husband, Jon, unveils a kinky side that goads his wife into the arms of another man, Kasischke's careful set-up makes this outrageous turn of events seem entirely plausible."

Detroit Free Press

"If there is any justice in the world, Laura Kasischke will soon be as big as Alice Sebold, she of The Lovely Bones, that haunting book that burned through smart women's book clubs. Kasischke's novels are as beautifully written and as daring in their subjects."

USA Today

"In the sadly poetic Be Mine, love leads to sex, mystery, betrayal, intrigue and violence, all wrapped up in the disturbing world of a middle-aged woman's deepest desires."