THE MAGIC HOUSE is a brilliant book with some of the most descriptive, courageous, passionate, intelligent, eloquent depictions of eroticism and human sexuality found in a novel. This book blows pornography and EL James out of the water. It makes Lawrence, Miller, Nin, and Mailer look tame. It is hot, a turn on of both the mind and the body. To try to classify it is difficult because terms like "romantic," "erotic," "bdsm," do not do justice to it. Just as there are complex, multi-faceted people who don't fit into categories without being diminished, so this book does not easily fit into a category or "genre." Is it a mystery? Yes, who is Vincent and why does he kidnap Johnny Alberi to his townhouse in Manhattan? Is it a thriller? Yes, when a protagonist is a murderer it can be called a thriller. Is it a romance? Yes, Johnny is in a triangle with the two women he loves. Is it "literary," if by the term we mean high level literature? Yes, if references to Dante, Catullus, Whitman, Blake, Yeats, Malcolm X and others indicate literary aspirations. Is it pulp fiction? Does it pull in popular interest in the Jersey Shore and the mafia? Yes and yes. Who is this Johnny Alberi anyway, who some call an anti-hero? He is an aging Italian American poet, spent, desperate, broke, entirely on the edge, who only manages to get out of bed in the morning because of his sexual urges. He lives in a small apartment filled with dreams, memories, poems, music, art, in a "one percent" resort town near Asbury Park. He decides the only way out of his difficult life is to rob one of the mansions on the beach and in the process murders the owner. This starts a wild series of events that take Johnny to the nadir and zenith of eroticism and sanity. In his odyssey he must choose between Margaret, the tall red headed beauty with a heart of gold and devotion to him, and Janus, a mysterious, compelling 22 year old woman whose sanity has been shattered by a violent past and who comes to Johnny for its return. Johnny's attempt at a heroic rescue of young Janus is thwarted by his intense, over-the-top libido. Yet he has a supreme belief in the power of love, poetry and literature to save this girl and so will go all out to try. What is the magic house? How does one enter it? And once inside, is there any way to escape it? The Magic House has it all: ghosts, cops, jail, race, true romance, wild sex, bondage, madness, poetry, and an attempt at a most unlikely redemption. Break into your doldrums with this unusually compelling novel that will pull you along in its tidal wave of emotion and desire. In the end, this novel is a meditation on the true nature of people and their awkward, heroic attempts at that most elusive phenomenon, love.
