Bücher von Jessica Levine

Why is it easier for a woman to be a muse than to have one? Can one be fully creative¿in art or life¿without the inspiration of erotic love? These are the questions asked in The Geometry of Love, a novel set in New York in the 1980s, then fast-forwarding to Northern California 20 years later. Julia, an aspiring poet, is living with her British boyfriend Ben, a restrained professor at Princeton, when she has a chance meeting with Michael, a long-ago friend. A charismatic composer, Michael was once a catalyzing muse for her, but now returns as a destabilizing influence. Julia longs to become involved with Michael, but hesitates to give up the security of her relationship with Ben. When Michael signals he is too wounded to make a commitment, Julia turns her triangular situation into a square by setting him up with a cousin. In the process she discovers, as Pascal once said, that ""the heart has its reasons which reason does not know."" This deeply psychological tale explores the surprising ways we make romantic choices.

When Anna, now living in California, is contacted by the Italian lover she knew decades before, she recalls their affair and the child she gave up for adoption. As the episode returns to haunt her-threatening the life she's built, including her marriage-the story moves back in time to her youth in Europe. Rome, 1979. Anna, twenty-two and living abroad, is involved with a man already engaged to be married. When she meets and befriends his fiance, she is forced to confront the moral consequences of her actions. But an unexpected pregnancy, an anonymous letter, and threatening relatives complicate the picture. A novel in which an unconventional heroine, far from home, is forced to reckon with the judgment of others.

This work explores the way in which Henry James and Edith Wharton treated subject matter that was considered controversial by American publishers at the turn of the century and how they pursued 'discretion', in order to avoid censorship.