Netsuke
Starred Review. 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)(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC.  All rights reserved.