Biography of Desire by Mary Dorcey, Poolbeg, 377pp, £7.99 It is difficult to move through the lush landscape of this ground-breaking novel without constantly pausing to savour the resonances in Dorcey's evocation of lust, passion and sexual obsession. With scrupulous honesty, the reader is taken through a tale of betrayal and abandonment, lies and deceits and, ultimately, freedom.
At the end one is filled with an ambivalent sadness that life is, indeed, like this. Or, a somewhat meaner satisfaction, that both women got what was coming to them; if you treat the happiness and security of your loved ones with reckless indifference, then you shouldn't complain when real life kicks you in the moral sensibilities.
Katherine is, to the outward eye, a woman who has everything: married to talented Malachy, mother to two boys, surrounded by like-minded friends. Life is good, financially protected, and seems set to continue like this. But we all know inexplicable things happen to upset the status quo, and that life can go out of control. And so it is for Katherine when, by chance, she runs into Nina.
Katherine's unnerving descent into sexual obsession with Nina is swift and catastrophic. Malachy, realising that something is amiss, decides to wait it out, knowing, in his generous, male way, that it will blow over. Even when realisation dawns that his wife is having an affair with another woman, he confidently assumes that since no one else can offer her the kind of good sex he can, she will return to his bed in good time. But he is wrong.
Nina, complex, predatory, unfaithful, has been down this road before with other women, within her long-term relationship with Elinor. The complication this time is that Katherine is a married woman, and in Nina's code of sexual conduct this brings unacceptable overtones with it. While Nina enjoys spending long, lazy days in bed with Katherine, it is to Elinor, and their shared child Lizzie, that she goes home to supper. She is certainly not sexually obsessed with Katherine, who is a temporary diversion, although a very pleasant one indeed. Some days Nina even imagines she is in love with her.
Finally leaving Malachy and her sons, Katherine goes to await Nina's arrival at their rented cottage in the West. Anguished, impatient, swinging from despair to high hopes, she documents her feelings in a diary, painting a moving picture familiar to anyone who has ever sat around waiting for a letter to arrive or a phone to ring.
Slowly, she begins to realise that their relationship is defined more by Nina's absence than her presence. She examines the cost of her obsession in terms of family and lifestyle. But she balances it with her joy in achieving a sense of freedom which she knows she will never again compromise. There is no going back. Loving Nina has changed her forever. Nina, meanwhile, is still in Dublin, weighing up the pros and cons of leaving Elinor and Lizzie.
Mary Dorcey's first is arguably the first truly erotic Irish novel. Full of courageous and challenging writing, Biography of Desire is exquisitely tuned to the lives of women, whether they live within the social constructs of society, or choose to opt out. Neither choice will necessarily bring happiness, but one, at least, brings with it the kind of freedom from socially defined morality of which most of us can only dream.
Clodagh Corcoran is a writer and critic