Many of these heroines are either adolescent or in some otherwise tenuous relationship to adulthood, and it is still the case that any depiction of the guilt-free, unpunished desires of such women feels new. I don't think we've reached a surfeit yet of uncorseted explorations of the female appetite. But it is in two less bouncy pieces that Erian's talent is refracted most interestingly. I vowed then to find someone I could fight with. . . . In these stories, love is less the dress you dance barefoot in, more a thing held up to the light, odd and prismatic, with fractures.
Sex is less a teleology than an alphabet, composing endless possibilities.
Stacey D'Erasmo is author of the novel Tea . Tell us what you think. E-mail this story to a friend.