About Yvonne: A Novel

by Donna Masini

Overview

"A haunting novel of sexual obsession." —The New York Times Book Review

"I have been stalking my husband's lover", claims Terry Spera, the obsessive, humorously edgy narrator of this intelligent and highly erotic tour de force, an auspicious debut novel The Washington Post hailed as "wonderfully impressive." Literally following in the footsteps of the young woman with whom she is certain her husband is having an affair, Terry eventually enters Yvonne's apartment, her closet, her medicine cabinet—and her life. As she strives to maintain a semblance of normalcy with her husband, Mark, a SoHo art dealer, Terry, and the reader, veer from certainty to uncertainty. Is Mark really having an affair?

With breathless energy, a deeply engaging voice, and a searing sensuality, Donna Masini illuminates the dim and fragmented terrain of a woman's inner life with the wit and passion of a dazzling literary talent. About Yvonne is a compelling, witty, beautifully written story of New York at the end of this century and of a woman at the end of her rope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393347869
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	724 KB

About the Author

Donna Masini is the author of three collections of poetry and a novel. She was awarded the Barnard Women Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches at Hunter College and lives in New York City.

What People are Saying About This

Louise De Salvo

Not since Josephine Hart'sDamagehas the chronicle of sexual obsession been so satisfying, so compelling.About Yvonneis…bold, inventive, graphic, riveting.

Editorial Reviews

[A] haunting novel of sexual obsession. -- NY Times Book Review

Maggie Garb

Masini received the Barnard New Women Poets Prize for her first book of poems, That Kind of Danger. And danger is clearly the aphrodisiac that makes Masini's splendidly erotic creative juices flow. In her first novel, narrator Theresa (Terry) Spera, an Italian-American New Yorker, is obsessively stalking Yvonne, a WASP art collector who may or may not be having an affair with Terry's husband, Mark, a gallery owner. Jealous and unhinged, Terry makes a copy of Yvonne's apartment keys and lets herself in. She tries on and steals the other woman's clothes, listens to telephone messages, reads letters and removes condoms from the medicine chest (and wonders why they're not closer to the bed). As Terry waits for conclusive proof that this elusive woman is indeed involved with her husband, the plot thickens. Terry, who teaches an English literature class as an adjunct at NYU, lurches into an affair with a student who shares her love of Yeats. Masini captures the frantic world of a desperate woman grasping for help as Terry turns to her psychiatrist, the Al-Anon Twelve Step program and her Catholic roots, looking for guidance and explanation. Terry's problems are serious, but she relates them with an earthy and smart sense of humor. Masini has Terry mobilize all her academic skills to understand a raw primal agony. In the end, the story isn't about Yvonne at all, of course, but about Terry. It's a smart, anguished and sexy account of a woman chasing her own psychological tail.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This debut by a prizewinning poet is a latecomer to bad-girl fiction, with all its candid sex-talk, and also furthers that most contemporary of tropes—the novel as extended whine.

Masini adds a strikingly Catholic variation—her female narrator lost her virginity at 24!—but the complaints are all the same: unfaithful men, patriarchal families, predatory single women. The heroine is 35-year-old Teresa Spera, a New York City literature instructor, who suspects her art-galleryowner husband of having an affair. Her slightly hysterical reaction is in keeping with her Brooklyn Italian background: She stalks her suspected rival and indulges in all kinds of strange behavior, from masturbating on the woman's bed (after breaking into her apartment) to spending a weekend at an austere Catholic monastery on Staten Island. Masini's exploration of a peculiarly Catholic pathology is right on. Terry digs spanking, light bondage, and being obedient; and her obsession with her husband's supposed lover is self-consciously operatic. After all, she swoons to diva Maria Callas and teaches Yeats. Meanwhile, Terry's husband is a bit of an anathema to this Brooklyn girl: He quotes Nietzsche and Foucault in defense of his obnoxious self-absorption, and he married only reluctantly. Besides, he seems to enjoy their kinky sex life and their trendy Soho lifestyle too much. Dutiful Terry finds little solace in her tight-lipped shrink, so she attends Al-Anon meetings, posing as Yvonne, her husband's supposed mistress. She begins to steal and dress in Yvonne's clothes, then finally confronts Yvonne in Penn Station on Christmas Day. For all her self-righteous moaning, Terry also manages to sleep with one of her students during the course of the melodrama, thus losing any claim to the moral high-ground.

Like most drama queens, Terry drags out her tale to insufferable lengths, and Masini doesn't censor her confused narrator. A potentially interesting short story overinflated.

Kirkus Reviews