Venus in Sparta Author:Louis Auchincloss In Venus in Sparta Louis Auchincloss has written not only a shocking novel about contemporary morality but a remorseless examination of modern American man's compulsion to prove himself a male. It is the finest novel yet of his distinguished and growing body of work. Michael Farish, the principal figure of the book, appears on first encounter ... more »to have attained an enviable position in our society. A graduate of a New England church school and Harvard, he is now at forty-five a trust officer of a Manhattan bank, being groomed for its presidency. He has an attractive wife and stepdaughter, a well-run house in town, and a place at Bradley Bay where his prominent family had summered for generations. But in one of the most graphic scenes in modern fiction Michael Farish is revealed as a man on close terms with despair. The reader is introduced to the man as a boy. We are permitted to see the packing of a young man's knapsack with the sense of inadequacy and quilt that he is to carry through his well-ordered life--the intricate family relationships and the no less decisive ones of boarding school where Michael is forced into the Averhill mold of rectitude. But the story of Michael Farish the man is the story of his struggle for love. It is the story of the three women in Michael's life. The first is Flora Cameron, a woman somewhat older than he and already married to a man who is unfaithful to her. Michael's second love affair begins during the war at a U.S. Naval Base in Britain where he is serving as an officer. There a WAVE, Alida Meredith, inspires in him a new ardor and it is to Alida that he turns long afterwards when he is in such need of solace. The third is his own stepdaughter, Ginny Dexter. It is the resolution of this last affair that brings Michael to his fianl appalling assessment of his own life.« less