Love in the garden / Jean-Pierre Otte ; foreword by Jacques Lacarrière ; translated from the French by Moishe Black and Maria Green.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Otte, Jean-Pierre, 1949-

Contributor:

Black, Moishe.

Green, Maria.

Standardized Title:

Amour au jardin. English

Language:

English

French

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xi, 122 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : G. Braziller, 2000.

Summary:

Written with wit and with a poetic fancy, and from a shamelessly anthropomorphic viewpoint, Love in the Garden delights in the ingenuity and variety of the sexual tactics of garden insects and flowers. The bee orchid, for instance, lures male bees by duplicating the scent emitted by females during mating season. When a male bee arrives, he searches excitedly for the non-existent female opening and, as he thrashes about, covers himself with pollen. His amorous advances frustrated, the bee moves on to another orchid and then another, inadvertently pollinating the next flower with the pollen he picked up from the last. In the realm of the insects, sex is often accompanied with violence and in some cases, even cannibalism. Take the notorious female praying mantis: in the midst of the sexual act, she beheads her enraptured male partner, who carries on though headless, while she devours him bite by bite.

Love in the Garden does not aim merely to enrich the scientific knowledge of its reader. Instead, it hopes to involve him, through sexuality and all forms of sensation, in the turbulence of life.

Contents:

The Astonishing Deception of the Bee Orchid 3

Inviolate Violet 11

The Primrose and Her Prohibitions 16

Name

Hyacinth, Grape. Occupation

Vamp 21

Subject: Passionflower with Birds 25

Journey to the Center of the Iris 30

Of Other Intimate Visits 35

The Arum's Masterly Strategy 44

Vagabond Queen 49

A Flower-carpeted Womb 53

Shrill Song from a Mixed Choir 61

Loves and Lives of a Millipede 66

The Way to a Bug's Heart 70

Sparks in the Dark of Night 78

Spider-Woman and the Kiss of Death 82

The World of the Stick Insects 87

Frothy Wedding 93

Barbed Love Meets Love Barb 101

Out-of-Body Fertilization 109

The Glass Snake 117.

Notes:

Originally published: Paris : Phébus, 1995.

ISBN:

080761467X

OCLC:

43648718