The Blood Oranges: A Novel

No synopsis or comparison can convey the novel's lyric comedy or, indeed, its sinister power—sinister because of the strength of will Cyril exerts over his wife, his mistress, his wife's reluctant lover; lyric, since he is also a “sex-singer" in the land where music is the food of love. "Need I insist that the only enemy of the mature marriage is monogamy? That anything less than sexual multiplicity . . . is naive? That our sexual selves are merely idylers in a vast wood?" Thus the central theme