Virgin Kisses
by Gloria Nagy‘My name is Arthur Freedman. Psychiatrist and killer.
‘I make $400,000 in a good year (more in a bad one). I am respected for my sanity, calm, cool and control. I am also a snob, a prick, a sadist; tense, anxious, alienated, a bad doctor and now a murderer. I am, in sum, the American wet dream.’
With amazing insight and a devastating sense of the psychoanalytic process, Gloria Nagy explores the secret inner life of a Beverly Hills psychoanalyst who discovers the perfect patient for his fantasies of total sexual abandon. As Venus granted Pygmalion’s wish for the perfect “Ivory Virgin,” Dr. Freedman finds in Rose, his own tarnished and shop worn version to mold and form. What transpires between them and within him turns this very black comedy into a bizarre, hilarious and moving tragedy about the prices we pay for self-deception and the fear of being who we really are, wherever and to whomever that road may take us.
Reviews
A stunning accomplishment—funny and sad, erotic and ultimately very moving. Gloria Nagy’s dazzling portrait of the sex-obsessed narcissist and his eager victim will make readers tremble with the rage and sadness of recognition.”
—Gael Greene
Virgin Kisses is like a nightmare Woody Allen would have on a very bad night—the humor is quite literally hysterical.”
—Time Out
Gloria Nagy’s gift is to move you as she elevates the ultimate joke into tragedy, marshaling absurdities for a final triumph.”
—New York Magazine
A lacerating, literate, funny, and obscene expose.”
—Vogue
Nagy is a tremendous writer who tiptoes along the fragile line between the believable and ridiculous but never makes a false step.”
—The Californian
