"Liesl was a pot friend..."

I was just reading Susan Minot's Rapture in the bath.

I only read about twelve pages quickly, since I'm reading in several novels at once (the usual state of affairs).

But I got to this sentence on page twelve, and it began "Liesl was a pot friend..."

She does live in a loft, but right away I wondered if this was a typo for "poet friend."

Neither scenario was really bolstered by the scene which immediately follows, but there is paint in the sink, and this could indeed be a somewhat bohemian friend who "scores" for this more "respectable," professional male character.

It's frustrating.

At first, you want to make fun of the writing, because it's so limpid and straightforward that it might seem sophomoric.

You worry that the author is writing for a dumbed down readership, that she is going to try to marry the Harlequin romance novel to say, the Kundera aesthetic.

Because there is a bit of a feel of that sort of hybridization/compromise going on.

You sense right away this is going to be a quick little number of a novel and that there are going to be, most likely, only three characters--or possibly two--who we will be studying in any detail. And the trio will be in a rather loose love triangle. A sloppy love triangle involving one man and two women. It's sloppy because all the characters are afflicted by an erotic lassitude---or a degree of amorous indifference, anyway.

Gender sterotypes have already been used to describe all three characters, which worries me.

But I like the quasi-conversational tone of the author's third person narration, and there have already been a few moments of luminous nakedness.

Maybe she will skew the narrative in a completely surprising direction.

Maybe the characters will be more than poses.

I'm hoping so.