Nude Men

Rarely has a first novel generated so much excitement, here and abroad, as Amanda Filipacchi's utterly beguiling Nude Men. The story is told by Jeremy Acidophilus, "a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him." Jeremy is twenty-nine, and his life is going nowhere. Until he meets a beautiful woman in a coffee shop. Lady Henrietta (she takes her name from Oscar Wilde's Lord Henry) paints nude men, some for art's sake, some for the pages of Playgirl. She wants Jeremy to pose for her and, naturally, he thinks he is falling in love with her. But it is Henrietta's precocious, voluptuous eleven-year-old daughter who seduces Jeremy - in a scene of startling imagination and uncanny charm. In this mesmerizing, uniquely witty novel, Filipacchi explores sexual mores with uninhibited freshness and originality, shaking our allegiance to conventional moral codes. Half French, half American, she has created a story that seems both guileless and sophisticated, and the pleasure one takes in it is accompanied by a touch of guilt. Despite that, or because of it, the pleasure is glorious.