The Catholic Author:David Plante Daniel, the young child of Plante's well-received Francoeur Trilogy (The Family, The Woods, The Country) appears as the first-person narrator of this brief but powerful meditation on sexual obsession. The intensely self-conscious Daniel is drawn to Henry, with whom he has a stunning, erotic one-night stand. Henry's significance to Daniel exceeds... more » his role in Daniel's life, and Daniel painfully knows this.
The stranger represents an unrealized longing for an ideal: the selflessly beautiful goal Daniel's religion and upbringing have taught him to yearn for but for which they have provided no satisfaction. Daniel sees his self-consciousness as a burden -- only the thing that denies the self can make him happy -- but it is also self-awareness, and Plante's delineation of Daniel's submergence in himself is stylish and convincing.« less