The Elusive: Four Romances (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780645013764)

The Adventures of Sally Bang charts an unruly anti-heroine's coming of age, and a ghost writer's need to possess her. At sixteen there's insight and beauty that never come again, and within every adult is a wish to get it back. What is gained and lost with growing up, and whose story is it anyway?

Commitment ensnares a standoffish narrator in relationship dilemmas, in a psychologic navel-gaze in cliffhanger style on the elusive as romance, the tango of intimacy and distance, conformism and the irrational.

In Search of Francesca Mars exposes an artist's vision of a self-immolating media star who tilts at strange liberation, who toys with all who need to put her on a pedestal or drag her down. A close-skinned portrayal of ambition and use, the politics of giving, glamour and ugliness, the artifice of art, the problem of value.

Innocence asks, who doesn't want innocence, no matter how obtuse the path? Dancer Libby Castro submits to demanding and needy people: husband, employer, spiritual mentor, analyst. Yet beyond insouciant roles and lazy vacancies she'll be no-one's shadow: a straw, a girl unmarked, woman alone...