Overview
Chaz and Muriel Lambent. No one can resist their startling beauty and seductive charm. No one can refuse an invitation to their fabulously orgiastic parties. No one can see them without wanting to possess one or the other or both. Certainly not Peter Keith, a young man whom they target for conquest. From the moment he spies Chaz in the upscale condo complex of Las Villas del Sol slowly and deliciously hosing himself down in the hot California sun, Peter is hooked, body and soul. Extending the terrain of such masterpieces of psychosexual subjugation as Damage and The Story of O to the lotus land of California south of L.A., Fearful Symmetry breaks new ground in bold erotic exploration and intense human revelation. Its youthful protagonist and narrator is consumed by a passion he has never known before and inflamed by the rawness of the sex he has first with one, then with the other of the perversely perfect couple whose plans for him he can neither imagine nor defeat. Even as he senses that sex in every form is only part of what the Lambents want from him, he cannot break free of their sensual spell and the growing hold they have upon his psyche. He is wed to their desires as inextricably as they are wed to each other, as both his bondage and their marriage suspensefully move toward a climactic moment of cruel truth and decision.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
In the manner of Sade, though with neither the reach of his genius nor the edge of his madness, Bills (Consider This Home, 1994) explores, in a sexually charged novel set in Southern California, the philosophical and erotic aspects of sadomasochism and bondage. When recent design-school graduate Peter Keith, gay and 25, moves next door to Chaz and Muriel Lambent, he finds himself enmeshed in their bizarre psychosexual world. Soon voyeuristic curiosity leads to mutual seduction. What subsequently unfolds is a tale that is, as narrator Peter puts it, "violent, lurid, and baroque." Graphic sex scenes mix and match bodies, sex acts (including a full-body shave) and appurtenances such as olive oil, leather masks and silk-sheathed chains. Peter rebels against his neighbors' domination when he uncovers their penchant for animal and human sacrifice. Interspersed with this main story line is Muriel's Scheherazade-like "Tale of the Angel and His Bride," told to Peter, and Chaz's claim that he and Muriel are "The Blond Ones," products of German genetic engineering. A bloody scene of mayhem and disaster caps the action in clear fashion, but what Peter finally discovers about himself and his relationships remains opaque. He hopes, as the novel closes, to "learn what kind of life might persist after a heart's illicit union with the celestial"-not to mention after a body has been spoon-fed with wrists and ankles shackled and a black rubber hood pulled over its eyes. (June)Library Journal
Fans of erotic fiction in the style of Josephine Hart's Damage (LJ 2/15/91) will appreciate this tale of sexual obsession by the author of Consider This Home (LJ 2/1/94). When Peter Keith meets his new Southern California neighbors, Chaz and Muriel Lambert, he is instantly attracted by their physical beauty and charm. Like poisonous spiders weaving an impossible-to-resist silken web, the Lamberts gradually ensnare Peter in an initially dazzling and later frightening world of sexual games that veer menacingly toward a violent end. Bills effectively ratchets up the level of tension as Peter's sexual need for both the Lamberts begins to conflict with his growing belief that something is sickeningly wrong. As all attempts to end the relationship fail, Peter must confront the darkness at the heart of the Lamberts' lives. Bills occasionally overwrites, so that Peter sounds both hopelessly nave and insufferably pretentious. Although the publisher is positioning this novel as a "literary" erotic thriller, not all readers will call it such. For large popular collections.Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, SeattleCharles Harmon
"The Menage aTrois from Hell" would be an appropriate alternative title for Bills' very adult novel. Young, gay Peter Keith has just settled into his first boring but fairly secure job. He moves into a complex next to Chaz and Muriel Lambent. He first sights the breathtakingly handsome Chaz hosing himself down after a run, gets to know Muriel, and finally becomes acquainted with both Lambents. Then Chaz seduces him, Muriel enters the scene, and he begins having frequent sex with both, separately and together. Things turn ugly when the Lambents take over Peter's life and end up kidnapping him. As Peter is drawn more deeply into the Lambents' world, he finds himself doing and wanting things he has never imagined doing or wanting. Bills' novel is as much about the lust we repress as it is about a series of not uninteresting events: murders, animal sacrifice, and not a little twisted sex--the incidents of a compelling page-turner. Read it before it becomes a bad film noir.Kirkus Reviews
A febrile and overwrought passage through the thickets of sexual obsession, in which Bills (Consider This Home, 1994) manages to illustrate the degradations of lust while conveying very little sense of its appeal.Peter Keith, from the very first line of his narration—"I didn't mean to fall in love with them"—seems determined to exonerate himself. A 25-year-old furniture designer from a working- class family, Peter moves into a tastefully landscaped housing development in southern California and becomes fast friends with his next-door neighbors, the Lambents, who seem to embody the sort of natural-fiber sophistication that Peter has had to cultivate so carefully on his own. It's not clear what Chaz and Muriel Lambent do, but Chaz is sleek and earthy in a Bruce Weber-ish kind of way (when Peter first spies him, he is hosing himself down in the back yard after an early-morning swim) and Muriel is "like a Modigliani sculpted in the flesh." In short order, Chaz seduces Peter, then flabbergasts him by bringing Muriel in for the second round. Although Peter seems gay in all of his instincts and most of his tastes, he finds that he actually enjoys this variation, and soon he is happily established as the free agent in their ménage à trois, which at first revolves mainly around sex and parties. Chaz and Muriel, however, quickly raise the stakes: To bondage, then to sadism, then to outright degradation and torture. Though Peter reaches his threshold soon after they embark on animal sacrifice, he is unable to break loose until the bloody climax of their obsession. Even then, of course, he can't rest in peace. He is doomed to remember the Lambents, to spend the rest of his life wondering "what kind of life might persist after a heart's illicit union with the celestial."
Hackneyed and remarkably lifeless: a Honcho fantasy written in Harlequin prose.