In the face of all contrary evidence, I continue to believe that it is possible for me to find a male novelist writing in the past 50 years who is able to pen something other than the creation of nubile young women who spend nearly every moment of their day naked, having sex with whatever older man wanders by...but I tire of the search. As a long-time fan of the author's plays, I expected much from this, and there are interesting concepts in here, including the character of The Risen Christ, but the book quickly became too depressing as it appeared the main gist of the story was to get as many outlandish men as possible into the sack with the young woman (at least in this case she was old enough to be legal, even if the author made sure she didn't look it). The only man, it seems, that the woman will not sleep with is her husband, who wanders through the first few chapters stroking a bomb and pretending not to care. I don't know if he will ever throw the bomb, because I finally gave up trying to wade through the misogyny of the text in total despair over the status of literature through the past half century. ( )