Elizabeth is a modern woman. Smart. Independent. As sexual as she wants to beβwith whomever she wants to be. But a breakup with her academic boyfriend has hit her harder than she cares to admit. And while her latest gig, translating a glitzy Czech thriller into English, offends her literary sensibilities, it arouses others with its steamy scenes of eroticism, violence, submission, and dominance. Then, when her favorite Van Morrison CD disappears from its rack and her house is inexplicably violated, Elizabeth is afraid sheβs starting to lose itβshe even consults a local vicar about the possibility of poltergeists. But what this woman in the lovely Victorian is experiencing is not supernatural. Nor is it madness. For in the dead of night, she will suddenly come face-to-face with her tormentor. She will smell him, she will touch him, and she will make a choice. Then the real haunting will begin. ** Amazon.com Review Sarah Dunant, a television host in London, begins and ends her poignant and powerful Transgressions with music by Van Morrison. When Lizzie Skvorecky can't find her favorite Morrison compact disc, Enlightenment, she thinks it might have something to do with the breakup of her last romance. Lizzie, the British daughter of Czech immigrants, is a translator, and her latest job is a tough Czech crime novel involving torture and rape. At first she writes off the weird things happening around her to either her ex-lover or the influence of her work. But soon Lizzie realizes she's in serious trouble, stalked by a vicious rapist, and not even the police can protect her. So she takes things into her own hands. By the time the book ends with Morrison singing "The Healing Has Begun," you'll know you've been on a rough and memorable trip. From Publishers Weekly There's a lot of showy exposition about the complicated ebb and flow of sexual power and violence, but, in the end, this thriller is about cheap thrills. Dunant, author of the popular Hannah Wolfe mystery series (Under My Skin, 1995, etc.), tells the story of Elizabeth Skvorecky. Recovering from a bad split with her live-in lover, Lizzie hunkers down in her London mansion to translate a trashy Czech police thriller. At first she resists the tale, internally railing against its images of mutilated female torsos and women chained up as dogs. But she gradually discovers that the misogynistic violence has "burrowed its way under her skin." In fact, it makes her hot. Meanwhile, someone appears to be infiltrating her home: CDs are disappearing, possessions are moved and then the manuscript of her translation is smeared with ketchup. Her vindictive ex? A ghost? When Lizzie awakens one night to find a stranger perched on her bed clutching a hammer, she seduces him proactively and is unexpectedly, and disturbingly, aroused. But when she learns that a serial "hammer rapist" is amok, she stops congratulating herself for surviving and begins stalking her stalker, baiting him with throbbingly sadistic chapters ostensibly translated from the Czech thriller but which, in fact, she has written herself to spook the prying rapist. Dunant "quotes" long passages of both the porn thriller and Lizzie's addenda, and then dismisses them as "total crap." Presumably, Lizzie is somehow empowered by writing bad porn, but we're certainly no better for reading it. Ultimately, it's hard to distinguish between what Lizzie writes and the ill-conceived, poorly disguised appeal to prurience Dunant has penned. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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