'Fleshy, beautiful and obscene' Evening Standard As she whiles away her summer days in a dull seaside town, a young woman finds herself strangely and increasingly drawn to the looming figure of her boss, the butcher. A controversial bestseller when first published 1988, Alina Reyes novella pairs here with her stories 'Lucie's Long Voyage' and 'The Fatal Bodice' to form a vision of female sensuality that is by turns dreamlike and nightmarish.‘Her depiction of sex has sparked a resurgence of erotica as a lost literary tradition.... The language is as rich as calves' liver.’ The TimesVintage Desire: classic stories of lust and longing.