From Amazon.com
Before he began writing fiction primarily marketed to a gay readership, Felice Picano was a noted author of suspense and supernatural tales.
Smart as the Devil and
Eyes were critical and popular successes when they were released in the mid-'70s, and Picano returns to the genre with
Looking Glass Lives, a contemporary gothic thriller that draws upon such diverse sources as Robert Nathan's classic novel
Portrait of Jennie and Kenneth Branagh's film
Dead Again. As with all of Picano's fiction (especially his bestselling 1994 novel,
Like People in History),
Looking Glass Lives is compulsively readable and always surprising. Roger Lynch, his wife, Karen, and his cousin Chas are caught in a dangerous, sexually fraught emotional ménage è trois, but only when Roger begins to unearth the deep, tormented secrets of their small New England town's history does he comprehend the real crux--and horror--of their relationship. Picano understands his characters and is unafraid to explore and expose their most intimate emotional and sexual needs. But he is also a master of suspense, and as
Looking Glass Lives hurtles towards its shocking climax, we are both disturbed and terribly pleased to have been on the trip.
--Michael Bronski
From Publishers Weekly
"He tells me that we are bound to each other by bonds greater and more lasting than any he has known?immortal ties. And I?fool that I am?I believe him." Immortal ties entangle lovers a century apart in Picano's (Like People in History) vaguely karmic, mercifully brief tale of love, betrayal and reincarnation. A Civil War-era love triangle between Amity Pritchard, her lover and her sister plays out to a deadly conclusion?and is then replayed in the present day when 30-year-old narrator Roger Lynch and his new wife, Karen, buy the old Pritchard house and Roger's childhood (and still childish) lover, Chas, shows up at the door, ready to wreak sexual havoc. Hampered by prose more suitable to YA romance than to adult fiction, the story lacks the emotional power of a good gothic romance, the suspense of a decent ghost story and the wit or grace to bridge the gap between the genres. Ten amateurish, coyly erotic illustrations do nothing to flesh out these wooden characters or their silly exploits d'outre tombe. Excerpted in Genre magazine; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
