Two women leaf through a book of French slang, with its delicate and delicious mixing of food and sex. A man and a woman sit in a Parisian dive, caressing each other's hands. Two lovers take late-night refuge in a beach cabana, their lovemaking lit by the lights of his automobile. These are glimpses of some of the haunting scenes and characters that people this sometimes wild, sometimes elusive exploration of desire's magical and subversive qualities. The fragile space-in the place right before the heart breaks-this is the space Carole Maso explores brilliantly and sensuously in her astonishing new prose fiction. Whether she is writing about two women washing lentils or a man's desire for a woman's pair of ink-stained hands, Maso charges her very sentences with such sexual energy that form and content literally become one. Reading Aureole is pure pleasure. -Marjorie Perloff, Edge of Irony Carole Maso is that rare creature--an original! Her voice and vision are like no one else's. -Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story Carole Maso is the author of Ghost Dance, The Art Lover, Defiance, and other novels. She has received many awards, most recently the Lannan Literary Fellowship for fiction.