Cross-Purposes

'Cross-Purposes', to cite its main title, is a philosophic-cum-romantic novel in which a young writer becomes amorously involved with the wife of an influential publisher and ends-up paying the price, as does a certain philosopher friend of his, whose subsequent double-dealing in connection with their mutual girlfriend proves more difficult to manage than he had at first suspected, putting him at cross-purposes with them both, to their mutual disadvantage! Despite its tragic outcome, 'Cross-Purposes' is far from bleak but at times immensely funny and even intellectually precocious. There are even a number or erotic overtones in this exotic novel, which also takes the reader to Paris and to the seedy underside of the Boulevard de Clichy. A radical departure from the social constraints of his previous novel 'Fixed Limits' (1976).