7 ½

A man arrives at a house on the coast to write a book. Separated from his lover and family and friends, he finds the solitude he craves in the pyrotechnic beauty of nature, just as the world he has shut out is experiencing a cataclysmic shift. The preoccupations that have galvanized him and his work fall away, and he becomes lost in memory and beauty.

He begins to tell us a story about a retired porn star who is made an offer he can't refuse for the sake of his family and future. So he returns to the world he fled years before, all too aware of the danger of opening the door to past temptations and long-buried desires. Can he resist the oblivion and bliss they promise?

This breathtakingly audacious novel by the acclaimed author of The Slap and Damascus explores finding joy and beauty in a raging and punitive world, the refractions of memory and time, and, most subversive of all, the mystery of art and its creation.