Strait Is the Gate

A landmark in world literature, Strait is the Gait describes a love affair-between an acutely sensitive boy growing up in Paris and his cousin from the countryside-that erupts into a soul-endangering passion. Jeroime Palissier spends many summers in rural Normandy, where the whole world seems ''steeped in azure,'' at the house of his uncle. He falls in love with his uncle's daughter, Alissa, and she with him, but as his ardor ascends to precarious heights, Alissa decides that the only way to save Jerome is to suppress everything that is beautiful in herself-in both mind and body. A devastating exploration of aestheticism taken to extremes, Strait is the Gate is a novel of haunting beauty that stimulates the mind and the emotions.