Labyrinth of desire : women, passion, and romantic obsession

Available (1)

Location	Collection	Call #
CLP - Main Library	Second Floor - Non-fiction	PR9199.3.S856 L33 2002
Location	CLP - Main Library
Collection	Second Floor - Non-fiction
Call Number	PR9199.3.S856 L33 2002

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Summary

Published Reviews

Booklist Review: "In this eye-opening book, Sullivan eradicates the bell jar effect of infatuation and conducts an honest tour of female entanglement with obsessive love. She begins the journey with a sensuous love story. A couple meet in a Mexican art gallery, and the man and woman are instantly drawn to each other in a most extraordinary way. After telling the story, Sullivan sheds light on the dark shadows of the ill-fated relationship. Each chapter extricates a wealth of information on how we role-play in making our own fantasies happen and how we can often fear our own potential so vehemently that we prefer to walk in a lover's shadow. The experience of reading Sullivan's words is very much like holding a mirror up to your soul. Already a best-seller in Canada, it is certainly a special book that will have universal appeal wherever it is published and is bound to be shared and reread by women of all ages. --Elsa Gaztambide"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Why do smart, sensitive women turn into lemmings at the sight of some Don Juan, throwing themselves over the cliffs of love like self-destructive fools? They're not fools, Sullivan argues, and far from destroying themselves, women use these "love objects" very deliberately, if not consciously. Sullivan poet, biographer and English professor at the University of Toronto develops this idea in an original and disarming manner. She presents a love story of her own design involving a lone woman in a foreign town, a dark and stormy artist lover and a horrible ending, leaving the world in ashes. Then she deconstructs the whole tale, teasing out its truths. The Werther male, the "demon lover"/Heathcliff, the solipsist/narcissist male who finds "S I N" or "Safety in Numbers," the Jean Rhys-ian woman so "adept at the broken heart" they're all here. And while Sullivan explores differences between the sexes in the way males and females love, she acknowledges that there's a universality in the obsessive love experience. Plunging into a passionate obsession lets humans release control and explore unknown depths within themselves. In the end, they may be shattered and alone, but out of that loneliness can come new understandings. Sullivan's cultural references Frida Kahlo, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras are right on target for any woman who's ready to (re)question the role of love in her life. Agents, Jan Whitford and Jackie Kaiser. (Feb. 1) Forecast: This Canadian bestseller is an obsessive read not academic, but not self-help, either. Bound to interest a wide range of book-buying women Ms. readers, NPR listeners, Utne fans and reading clubbers it should do well. After all, who hasn't had an intense love affair they're still fixated on? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Additional Information

Subjects	Sullivan, Rosemary, -- 1947- -- Relations with men. Poets, Canadian -- 20th century -- Biography. Man-woman relationships in literature. Man-woman relationships. Women in literature. Women -- Psychology.
Publisher	Washington, D.C. :Counterpoint,2002
Edition	1st American ed.
Language	English
Notes	Originally published: Toronto : HarperFlamingo, 2001.
Description	178 pages ; 20 cm
Bibliography Notes	Includes bibliographical references (pages 178-179).
ISBN	1582431779 (alk. paper)
Other	Classic View