Simon’s Reviews > A Spy in the House of Love > Status Update

Things I did not remember from first read: The one black/Polynesian lover of Sabina, Mambo, criticising her for fetishising him as a representative of a foreign culture more than an individual; the Irish police officer Donald belittling women as a result of unexamined issues with his mother specifically singling out Marie Curie, Joan of Arc and Amelia Earheart; the wounded RAF officer John's survivor's guilt.

Giving this a re-read for the first time in 2 years after reading the author's first 2 books "Winter of Artifice" and "House of Incest" which both contain several themes and characters that I can recognise as later appearing here.

also interesting how she uses so many elaborate and colourful metaphors to describe the characters' inner emotional lives, as well as vivid almost psychedelic or surrealistic dream sequences, or how frequently she shifts between perspectives and even geographical locations + time within the same (rather short) chapters

I am also impressed by how sympathetically Sabina's husband Alan is portrayed, and the fact that she still feels attached to him, as well as how all the characters are to some extent feeling restrained by the public images they have to fit into, and social roles prescribed to them. Like in "Little Birds" it's notable how studiously Anaïs Nin avoids ever passing moral judgement on any of her characters at all.