Love is a Solitary Game

Published in Spain in 1979 and winner of the Ciudad de Barcelona Prize, this novel explores the inner lives of three charactersElia, Clara and Ricardo. Both Clara and the pimply poet Ricardo adore Elia, and the meager plot traces Ricardo's calculated orchestration of a sexual menage a trois, the realization of which forms the final scene. Along the way, however, the reader is neither told much about the characters' actual lives nor given true access to their thoughts and feelings. Typically the author seems stuck between the external and internal world: ""There is undoubtedly a feeling in the air, thinks Ricardoit started with me but she's got it toothat we're acting out a sort of drawing-room charade. Both of us love subtlety, and this is a subtle and sophisticated game.'' Hailed at home as both a daring sexually explicit novel and a feminist statement, this work loses much of its impact here. January