No Tomorrow

No Tomorrow
By Vivant Denon. Translated by Lydia Davis. NYRB Classics, $12.95 paperback.

First published in 1777, this slender, erotically charged novella is the firsthand account of a naive 20-year-old Parisian, who on page two is whisked away from the opera house by a slightly older woman. She takes him to her country house, where her estranged husband waits, and where the narrator and his captor engage in high-stakes mind games, swerving between interludes of hanky-panky and “better not” prudence. The story is ideal for translator Lydia Davis, as it finds power in suggestiveness rather than explicit description. There are veiled references to heavy petting, sure, but the most tantalizing quality of this book is its ability to tease the reader: By the morning, when a third man shows up, it’s impossible to know who’s manipulating whom.—MM

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