Gangsters

Gangsters is a bold and beautifully crafted tale of adultery and erotic obsession. Its lovers are Nicole, an observant Jew who teaches Bible studies at a New York college, and Tom, an architect and a devout Christian. They meet clandestinely in an empty apartment where they abandon themselves to passionate - sometimes perverse - eroticism, and where they create a guilt-ridden but irresistible world. Theology is the lovers' private code, a shared love-talk, tender but lethal as a weapon.

Armed with Scripture, religious but in crucial ways amoral, willing to risk everything for their illicit bond, they become sexual outlaws - gangsters - dangerous to others, and to themselves.

The novel unfolds in quickly shifting scenes that are variously lyrical, brutal, erotic, and elegant. It is as truthful to the dense daily domesticity of middle-class marriage - school schedules, orthodontia bills, shopping lists - as it is to the seductive Promised Land that beckons outside it. Domestic love is as fully explored as the high passions and painful dilemmas of adultery.

In strikingly original ways, Gangsters shows the damage men and women can do to each other when - especially when - they love each other most.