Because I'd lighted upon a book of her short stories, I had to get one of her novels. In a sense I didn't like this because of my irritation with the self-flagellation involved in religious ecstasy. The pure and innocent against the straightforward but increasingly depraved adulteress makes for a powerful good/evil theme, with, not surprisingly, a bit of a devil manipulating both, or trying to. It's a funny thing, to be totally impressed by something you're reading and not actually to enjoy it. I'd still highly recommend it.

A Recent Martyr (Voices of the South)

Valerie Martin's third novel is the story of a deadly love triangle set in New Orleans. Emma Miller, married and the mother of a five-year-old daughter, is obsessed by her increasingly sadomasochistic relationship with Pascal Toussaint, who is himself fixated upon Claire D'Anjou, a young novice with a passion for God so powerful that she has been sent home to New Orleans by the convent for a year's test of her vocation.<br />In a city overrun by rats and awash in a mysterious plague, freedom and the consuming desire for self-sacrifice are pursued to harrowing, ultimately redemptive consequence. New Orleans - alluring, pleasure-loving, mesmerizing - remains both a force in its own right and a backdrop to the erotic contests at the center of the novel that established Martin as a major American voice.

A married woman becomes entangled in a sadomasochistic love triangle in plague-ridden New Orleans.

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