num_pages: 320
description: The Seductions of Natalie Bach documents a heady girl's coming of age at a heady time, and her wide-eyed discovery of the wondrous, remarkably confusing world around her. Natalie flees her family and upper-middle-class Jewish background to discover life on her own terms.Still in high school, Natalie Bach wanders the streets of New York, visiting studios of hip artists, experimenting with sex and searching for her sexual identity. She flies on the city's energy, experiencing jubilant highs and grinding lows-in fights with her spiteful mother, sessions with her psychiatrist, one night stands, and a painful, unrequited love affair with playboy Claude. She attends The Art Students' League and takes her first steps toward becoming an artist. Natalie haunts the apartment of her friend and former teacher, Maxine, a steamy seductress whose intensity matches Natalie's. Charged with urgency and confusion, their friendship blossoms into a love affair, leaving Natalie confused about her sexual identity. Natalie's journey of self-discovery takes her cross-country to live in the redwoods, to Israel, and back to New York again. She is both seduced and seductress, an impressionable girl who epitomizes the rebellious spirit of the sixties, defying convention to live life on her own terms. Narrated in the first person by Natalie and her friend Maxine. Little, Brown nominated Seductions for The National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award. Independent film producer George Paaswell optioned film rights for the book. 	“The Seductions of Natalie Bach is one of the best works of fiction about that pregnant decade [the ‘60's], comparable to Marge Piercy’s Small Changes and Lisa Alther’s Kinflicks.	Luvaas recaptures the excitement of coming of age against a background of assassination, political activism, sexual experimentation, intellectual arrogance and generational conflict. He also creates in Natalie Bach, and her friend and mentor Maxine Pearlman, believable characters whose fate we care about.” 	John Gabree, Newsday – “For The Beach Blanket”“This is a tale of lost sexual innocence, female relationships and growing up. Perhaps the most striking thing about The Seductions of Natalie Bach is Luvaas’ writing style. He tumbles onto the page in an explosion of phrases and descriptions to produce a novel that is not only fun to read but also full of surprises.”	Joyce Demma Bertshy, The Arizona Daily Star“The story relates the coming of age of Natalie Bach: New Yorker and child of the ‘60s, who, while traveling down all the dead-end alleyways of her generation, manages to save herself by a gutsy determination to remain her own person....a novel by turns warm, coy, sad and funny, always human and ultimately heroic.”	Doug Marx, BookMarx column - Willamette Week“This is not a book to rush through, looking for the sexy parts. It’s too well-written for that. One needs to savor the small surprises in the language. And, besides, there are plenty of sexy parts as Natalie struggles through sexual uncertainties on her defiant, careening course toward womanhood.”	Eleanor Martin, Sunday Magazine – The Times Herald Record“The novel has the feel of one written by a native of the city [New York], though Luvaas grew up in Oregon and now lives upstate. He describes its grittiness, its romance and despair, with a poetry that makes the novel satisfying and intelligent reading.”	Jonathan Ward, Prospect Press
language: English
title: Seductions of Natalie Bach
titlecomplete: Seductions of Natalie Bach
ratings_count: 12
publisher: TBS The Book Service Ltd