Review: Don't Be a Stranger by Susan Minot

Don't Be a Stranger by Susan Minot

Blurb from Goodreads:

A mesmerizing new novel from the author of Evening: the story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life

Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed.

In spellbinding prose, Susan Minot has crafted a luminous novel about erotic obsession, and the hunger for intimacy, communication, oblivion. Don't Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.

This was, at times, almost painful to read because it was authentic.  I could imagine these feelings and making these same choices and yet I wasn't to stop Ivy.  I was mesmerized and couldn't put this one down.  Beautiful writing and so intimate. I would definitely recommend!

Don't Be a Stranger comes out next week on October 15, 2024, and you can purchase HERE!  

Don't be a stranger, she said.

I'm as ephemeral as the wind, he said after he'd turned his back to her.

Yes, I got that.

She watched him descend the stairs past the curling grate, through the glass of the elevator shaft, and heard his footsteps going across the quiet lobby.

But did she really? Well, nothing was going to poke through the cotton swathing her. Later she'd wonder why they went their separate ways that morning when they were both otherwise alone. But she was still accepting any new thing.