Shared Pleasures

A woman meets a man and falls in love with him. It’s the oldest story in the world, but Johanna Adorján recounts it with such immediacy and in such down-to-earth tones that it feels like the first time its ever been told. This is a story about the relationship between love and freedom; when you think you know all about love, it trips you up all over again. This is a story about love turning into something dark and sinister.

A woman meets a man; he is handsome and interesting, with a hint of mystery about him; he is attentive yet somehow a little distant, as if he wants to experience the situation at a remove even as he loses himself in it. They meet, he sweeps her off her feet, but just as she begins to let herself relax into a new sense of proximity he seems to back off. And while he becomes ever more central to her life, he appears increasingly free with his affections. Is he playing some strange game with her? Is this lack of emotional commitment his way of exercising power over her? Or is he actually offering her a version of love that is better, freer? Shared Pleasures is a novel about yearning and emancipation.