Meeting the Master: Stories about Mastery, Slavery, and the Darker Side of Desire »

A subtle, beautifully crafted collection, Meeting the Master introduces an accomplished new author whose lyrical economy and ability to see the erotic in everyday life make her a true pleasure to read. A young girl dreams of submitting to a boy who has no interest in controlling her; an ex-convict is so accustomed to servicing his cellmate that he cannot adjust to the outside world; a professional dominatrix explores her life with a psychiatrist; a student lies his way into the home of a stern older man in order to become his houseboy: Elissa Wald's characters embody a wide variety of voices - children, adults, gay, men, bi- and heterosexual women - and she presents them all with precision and an unusual clarity of vision.

Publishers Weekly

While the eight psychologically complex stories in Wald's fiction debut deal mainly with relationships involving dominance and submission or sadomasochism, their human interest extends in many directions. In "The Resolution," Charlotte, a successful actress who, at 15, ran away from an orphanage and worked in a circus food concession, clings to her friend and former lover, Jorg, a gay Puerto Rican circus performer who tests HIV-positive. Her love for him is indelibly linked in her mind with Christa, her Native American orphanage pal and lover, who died of rubella. In "The Illustrating Man," Harlem tattoo artist Darwin Godfrey murders his evil landlord, who had stolen an armless girl's prosthetic limbs, refusing to return them until he received unpaid rent. The narrator, a journalist, recounts the stories of clients whose lives have been transformed by Godfrey's tattoos, and herself receives a tattoo from the now imprisoned artist. "Therapy" oscillates between a dominatrix's bedroom sessions and her sessions with her psychiatrist, who traces the roots of her predilection to past rejections. In "The Houseboy," a rich Pennsylvania high-school wrestling star, misrepresenting himself, lands a job in New York as the housekeeper of a flinty CIA agent and Vietnam veteran, whom he servilely worships. Both are closet homosexuals, and the story pivots on mutual deceptions and revelations. Wald, who has worked in the circus, as a stripper and as a counselor to prostitutes, clearly knows her varied characters, whom she portrays in a sympathetic yet unsparing light. (Sept.)