Fear: A Novel - Hardcover

What to make of a novel in which the main character's name is Fear, his antagonist's name is Harm, and spider webs figure prominently? Oh, what a tangled web Simon Lane is weaving in Fear, a novel as much about what goes on in the mind of a writer as in what appears on the page. Starving poet, Fear, lives in Paris where he is down to his last red franc; he is considerably in debt to a thug named Harm, and so, when his banker Madame Jaffre suggests he try the more lucrative if less literary genre of pornography to make money, Fear decides to take a stab at it. The first part of Lane's novel then gives way to a second narrative, the pornographic novel itself, in which a French stripper disports herself with an American commercial airline pilot. As if this weren't enough, Lane adds a nameless female writer to the mix, allowing her to speak most directly about the writing process itself. Lane spins his tale and weaves his narratives in and out and all around each other until, at last, writers become characters, characters take on lives of their own, and Fear fearlessly explores the places where art and passion connect.

Simon Lane, born in England, divides his time between Paris and Rio de Janeiro. He also has lived in Berlin, New York, Milan and Portugal. He is the author of two previous novels, "Still Life with Books" and "Le Veilleur."