Belinda

The cover of ''Belinda'' looked like a cheap, housewife-approved Harlequin romance novel until I read the first chapter and realized it was a bit too sophisticated. The location, wording, pace and tone didn't have the usual romance-novel feel to it. Thus......... I loved this book. It's not as sexually graphic as the other Rice novels, but that's the beauty. Narrator and character Jeremy Walker's obsession with Belinda is disturbing and sexy. He describes her physical attributes and mannerisms in very good detail that can make the story a bit slow at times, but it doesn't totally kill it. Jeremy is a middle-aged, twice divorced, sexually repressed man in love with an uninhibited 16-year-old girl. She enters his life at a time when his creativity is numb and he is bored with his dull existence. She frees him sexually and creatively. It's not a kinky book nor is it sexually perverse. The beauty is in his intense obsession with her. His fondness for her immaturity, sophisticated tastes and shortcomings is a love story onto itself. Rice re-creates ''Lolita'' with a twist. Except Jeremy's character is handsome and Belinda is a runaway. The San Francisco and New Orleans locations and Catholic undertones are what make the novel a story of substance. There are moments when I think the book is an eerie resemblance of Louis Malle's movie ''Pretty Baby'' which featured a naked 12-year-old Brooke Shields.