A Singular Passion

Nabokov meets the Marquis de Sade in Wagner's (Sands of Valor) latest novel, a sophisticated satire about an aging Italian nobleman who's seduced into a fever of sexual perversion by a much younger American woman. Narrator Attilio Galimberti is a latter-day Humbert Humbert; his paramour, with her rude sexuality and blunt ways, is a twisted Lolita for the '90s, a Lolita back for revenge; and their creator's language is patterned distinctly after Nabokov's: ``Of the lashes of the dying swan (eyes outlined in `panther' black) and her limpid lips, crumbs of milles feuilles clinging to their corners....'' reads part of the opening paragraph. Married to an overweight and amorous former Nazi (shades of Mrs. Haze), Attilio meets a beautiful American college student, Leyton Cox, who slowly seduces him into the eroticism of pain-spankings, nipple piercings, whippings. To keep Leyton from returning to the States, Attilio is willing to steal jewelry from his wife, but his deep-rooted pessimism about his new lover proves warranted when she abandons him, destitute, in southern Italy. Wagner's language, though playfully challenging, lacks the incandescence of Nabokov's, and his Attilio lacks the poignancy of Humbert Humbert even as his story misses the dimension of social satire that made Lolita a devastating critique of American vapidity. Still, this works as homage-as well as one of the smartest takes on sado-masochism since the days of Jerzy Kosinski. (Dec.)