A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nin (1954)

A woman seeks to live with the freedom of a man in 1950's New York.

Book Review: A Spy in the House of Love is the fourth book written in Anaïs Nin's continuous novel sequence, "Cities of the Interior" (the novels can be read in any order, "continuous" in the sense of a circle). The three central female characters in these books embody the primal elements; here, Sabina (introduced in the first book, Ladders to Fire) represents fire or passion. She is described as evoking "the sounds and imagery of fire engines as they tore through the streets of New York, alarming the heart with the violent gong of catastrophe." An observer realizes that the "first time he looked at her he felt: everything will burn." At the beginning of the novel's journey Sabina is Stravinsky's The Firebird, needing change and motion, even if motion becomes meaningless. For her "later was always too late; later did not exist." She desires to encompass the same amorous life as men are allowed, without commitment, free of "the capacity for pain." In A Spy in the House of Love Nin explores this concept in depth, having Sabina will herself "to be like man, free to possess and desire in adventure, to enjoy a stranger ... her fantasy of freedom ... to arrive at enjoyment without dependence which might liberate her from all her anxieties connected with love." She is willing to be "the whim, the caprice, the drug, the fever." She dresses conspicuously: "the cape held within its folds something of what she imagined was a quality possessed exclusively by man: some dash, some audacity, some swagger of freedom denied to woman." In a brief but memorable scene, Sabina walks down the street feeling fragile, brittle, "crushable," overwhelmed by danger, but is startled by the strong woman walking next to her, comforted "by her tallness, the assurance of her walk," that this woman walks without terror. Sabina suddenly realizes that this is her reflection in a store window: the startling contrast between how a woman might see herself and how she might be seen. As she moves through various affairs, Sabina realizes that she jeopardizes what she values (or at least, "needs") and that living like a man requires her to live in deceit and to divide herself into parts. I have a weakness for Nin's writing, although this is less like her usual diary style and more similar to typical novels (if one can call anything Nin does "typical"). Bantam Books took the opportunity of the success of her Delta of Venus to give this edition a cover tie-in, but while at times sensual it's not erotica. In fact, the few hints at erotica seem horrible failures: "only one ritual, a joyous ... impaling of woman on man's sensual mast." Ugh. Although I haven't read it, A Spy in the House of Love seems an obvious precursor to what was considered revolutionary much later in the Seventies, Fear of Flying (1973) by Erica Jong. So far, this is my favorite of Anaïs Nin's work. Here, with Sabina, you will discover the wonderful concept of "moon-baths," and that for "living like a spy in the house of many loves, for defeating ... definite boundaries, for passing without passports and permits from one love to another. Every spy's life had ended in ignominious death."  [4★]