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by Tim Parks
Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute, the Buddhist retreat where Beth Marriot has taken refuge, and that's a big advantage. Beth has been working as a server, assisting in the kitchen and helping out - discreetly, so the meditators aren't disturbed. The meditators are making big sacrifices to come here and change their lives. So the servers must observe the rules, and silence and separation of the sexes are chief among them.
But Beth is fighting demons. She came here at a crossroads in her life, caught between an older lover who wouldn't choose her and a young one who wants to marry her, and she may have caused another man's death when she risked her own life swimming out to sea in a gale. A singer in a band, vital and impulsive, fleshy and sexy, she has been a rebel and a provocateur. And now, conflicted and wandering, she stumbles on a diary in the men's dorm and cannot keep away from it, or the man who wrote it. At the same time, desiring - all too hard - to achieve the inner peace that Buddhist practice promises, she yearns for the example set by the slim, silent, white-clad teacher Mi Nu, and maybe yearns for something more.
Comic and poignant at the same time, swiftly paced and completely engaging, Sex Is Forbidden is an entertaining novel about two profoundly different attitudes to life, and Beth - our narrator - is a character to be savored.
"Starred Review. Assured. Accomplished. Memorable. " - Kirkus
"Thought-provoking ... Teases you to the last page, and possibly beyond." - Spectator (UK)
"Excellent. At once comic and gently moving." - Financial Times (UK)
"[A] cracker - clever, funny, and insightful, with complicated, conflicted, and totally convincing Beth at its heart" - Daily Mail (UK)
This information about Sex Is Forbidden was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tim Parks was born in Manchester, England, in 1954, grew up in London, and has lived in Italy since 1980. His novels include Europa, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and he is the author of several nonfiction accounts of life in Italy, including Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education. During his years in Italy, Parks has translated works by Italo Calvino, Roberto Calasso, Alberto Moravia, and Machiavelli. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, for which he blogs.
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