Fire: From """"A Journal of Love"""" the Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1934-1938

As this gushing, erotically charged journal opens in late 1934, Nin, having left France for New York, records her complex love life with her adoring husband, American banker Hugh Guiler; her psychoanalyst, Otto Rank, whom she seduced; and writer Henry Miller, whose muse and disciple she had been during their affair in Paris. Bored and sexually unfulfilled with Guiler, Nin returns to Paris with Miller in 1935, and this diary, which extends to 1937, finds her again divided in her passions between Miller and another lover, Gonzalo More, a Peruvian communist. She describes other affairs as well, including the incestuous relationship with her father, a Spanish pianist. Although Nin (1903-1977) portrays herself as overflowing with love and maternal tenderness, one is left with the impression of overwhelming narcissism and confusion. Fans will find her mercurial prose intoxicating, in a self-portrait as distorted and self-serving as Henry and June (1986) and Incest (1992). Photos not seen by PW. (May)