Grandes Allusion

Almudena Grandes doesn't give a damn if you consider her first novel, The Ages of Lulu, pornography. "Eroticism and pornography are the same," she says. "It depends on the sensibility and feelings of the receptor of the message. I don't care about it. I only care if the book is good or is bad." The Ages of Lulu was a sensation in Europe, and Grove Press is releasing it this month in the U.S. The Madrid native describes her novel as "a love story," although it's more in the tradition of the Story of O than of Romeo and Juliet. It's the tale of 15-year-old Lulu, who is indoctrinated into the naked arts by a much older family friend, Pablo. Grandes's training as a writer of texts for coffee-table books and encyclopedias is evident in her frank depictions of Lulu and Pablo's erotic entanglements. Indeed, the book could function as a compendium or beginner's manual of sexual degradation: voyeurism, incest, sadomasochism, transvestism, bondage—all the old favorites make an appearance, as well as a nod to the sentimental with oral sex in a moving car. Grandes believes that the novel functions as a "testimony of a generation" and that it turns the old adage "Women only can have sex with love and only men can have sex without love" on its head.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL