Netsuke: a Novel

March 15, 2011

Pick up a book by the award-winning Ducornet (The Fan-Maker's Inquisition), and you know it will be startling, elegant, and perfectly formed--like netsuke, those miniature Japanese sculptures used to fasten the cord of a kimono. This latest, an unflinching meditation on the twinned drives of lust and destruction, is no exception. The antihero is a self-satisfied and sexually compulsive psychoanalyst who sleeps with his patients--or at least the desirable ones, his practice being divided in his mind between Spells and Drears. He's "the Marquis de Sade of psychiatry" and proud of it. His wife, Akiko, an artist who works, appropriately, in the delicate medium of paper, is luminous, elegant, and trusting; he perceives almost gleefully that the air has gone out of their marriage and occasionally dangles clues about his infidelities, then snatches them back. But his game is finally upended by two new patients--the self-destructive Cutter, whom he allows to intrude into his feelings as never before, and the gender-transforming David/Jello. The consequences are both sad and satisfying. VERDICT Writing about a satyr-psychiatrist could be so predictable, but Ducornet makes her characters real and scary beneath the ruminative, quietly observant prose. Highly recommended for literate readers.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2011

A psychiatrist's erotic desires run amok, bringing ruin to many lives.

The novel, an amalgam of erotica and tragic romance with clear literary aspirations, begins with an italicized section describing the main character running in a park, godlike, exuding a sexual magnetism that allows him (in his 60s) to seduce with a glance a much younger woman running past him. They enter the woods for an immediate tryst, which the author describes in pornographic, philosophical and mythological language. The narrative switches to first person to describe the unnamed psychiatrist's compulsions to seduce his patients, as he operates two separate "cabinets" (offices), one called "Drear" for his mundane clients and the other "Spells" for the ones with whom he is sexually involved. The doctor's inner monologue oscillates between confident narcissism (he is all-powerful, perhaps even doing therapeutic good through these affairs) and awareness of his decadence and impending doom. He longs to be caught, and death is in the air alongside the ubiquitous sex. Moreover, he has a compulsion to leave clues—verbal and otherwise—for his wife Akiko (the collector of the titular netsuke) to find. He is able to sustain his affairs with myriad patients and strangers until he meets David, a new patient whom he immediately designates for Spells—he's attracted to him as a man—but no, David is a woman named Jello, a drag queen. Inevitably, it all comes crashing down as lovers and wife become aware that the doctor has been very busy.

No reader will be impoverished for having skipped this one.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from January 24, 2011
Sex and psychosis are indistinguishable in this killer new novel from Ducornet (The Fan-Maker's Inquisition). An unnamed psychoanalyst narrator has a habit of having sex with his patients. At the risk of losing his practice, he descends into a co-dependent affair with a self-destructive woman he calls the Cutter, and later becomes obsessed by the torrid sex he has with a cross-dressing patient who suffers from split personalities. Affluent, psychotically self-absorbed, and as emotionally damaged as his patients, the doctor is just shy of a monster and lives in a twisted, sultry world that Ducornet poetically and viscerally describes, down to the effect of excessive sex on the texture of his skin. After he drops a series of clues to his affairs, the question becomes what will happen when his neglected and suspicious wife finds out. For a relatively short novel, this is unexpectedly heavy, as fascinating as it is dirty and dark, and while Ducornet's prose is initially overbearing, the plot is impossible to resist.

May 1, 2011
Ducornets unnamed narrator is a troubled, self-centered psychoanalyst. Though he has been married to his artist wife, Akiko, for 10 years, he frequently has erotic encounters with his patients and strangers, and is as infatuated with his sexual impulses as with the control over his practiced seduction. His downfall begins during an illicit relationship with one of his more volatile patients, the troubled Kat, whom he calls the Cutter. He becomes increasingly enraptured with the young woman, even though the relationship threatens to reveal his indiscretions to the apprehensive Akiko. The psychoanalyst frantically tries to keep the affair under wraps, which proves difficult as the Cutters self-harm becomes more intense. He later takes on a new patient, David Swancourt, a cross-dresser with male and female split personalities, and the two are soon engaged in an all-consuming sexual affair. At the same time, Akiko becomes increasingly suspicious about her husbands infidelity, and he secretly wants her to finally uncover the truth. An enticing, fast-moving exploration of one mans obsession with his calculated power and unhinged desires.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)