Desire

By Lindsay Ahl

Book Overview

"A dense, dreamlike novel. You wake with a sense that your own world has changed because of this foray through the wilds of Africa, New Mexico, and family life."--Susann Cokal, author of Mirabilis In... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156689154X
• ISBN13: 9781566891547
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Out Of Africa and Into Your Heart

What a wonderful journey I was able to take when I read Lindsay Ahl's DESIRE. I loved traveling right with the protagonist as she went from Albuquerque to New York City, on to Africa and back, feeling the texture of Elena's emotional and tactile life. Beautifully written, poetic and suspenseful, Ahl painted a story you will love to get lost it. I loved it!

Gripping, honest

I could not put this book down. It is a deeply compelling, odd, contemporary story. It is about love on one hand and also, perhaps more centrally, about the relationship between a daughter and mother. Lindsay Alh handles this particularly complex subject matter masterfully and honestly. The story is unique, as is the central character, but the truths she uncovers spoke directly to me. This book opened my mind in new ways. The powerful imagery she employs along the way remains with me. I can't wait to read the next thing she writes.

Good Enough to Read Twice (...or More)

The moment I turned the last page of DESIRE by Lindsay Ahl, I wanted to read it again. So I did. After two readings, I still can not seem to get enough of this book. I immediately was drawn into Elena's world, and the love she feels for her lover, Michael. When things turn bad, she gets in her car and takes off, running away from it, but soon enough she's moving toward a truth she doesn't know yet, but hopes she can find.This novel is a completely engaging tale of self discovery and love. The poetic prose envelopes you in a wonderful other worldliness, whether it's on the dry back alleys of Sante Fe, the wet crowded streets of midtown Manhattan, or the wild, all encompassing plains of Africa themselves. Do yourself a favor, and get your hands on this book. Then do yourself another favor, and read it again when you're done.

elephant graveyards

This book is, above anything else, sensual - the textures of heat, the cement sidewalk outside a Burger King, the heroine's arms against a chain link fence, the porous quality of ivory. You don't just read this book, you FEEL it - which results in an intense, sometimes overwhelming experience. I had to put it down a few times while reading it, to catch my breath. There are scenes that are very hard to read (I've got a soft spot for elephants, too, like the narrator's mother) but even those are filled with a kind of lyrical beauty, the violence of the natural world. In one scene, the narrator comes out of a house in Africa to see a lion sitting on top of a car. I caught my breath - it is so beautifully put down in prose, that your shock and the narrator's are the same.The author's strength is in making you feel like you are in her body, experiencing her narrator's life as she lives it - you feel her hair pull as it gets cut in a rest-stop bathroom, you feel the clothes she's wearing as if they're on your own body. An intense, moving work, like the raindrops in Africa she describes - full of light, sensual, individual.

magic storytelling

This book is part mystery, part love story, part ghost story (the dead come to life and the living disappear), and part intense travel writing, like On The Road, with amazing images throughout. You learn about elephants, hyenas, New York City rooftop parties, New Mexico back alleys, magic, and yourself, as you read mesmerized. I picked up the book at a book fair in Chicago and couldn't put it down.