Love's Body, Dancing in Timeby L. Timmel Duchamp 
Honor List for 2004 James Tiptree, Jr. Award
a Locus-recommended book
Love’s Body, Dancing in Time offers five love
stories by critically acclaimed author L. Timmel Duchamp. Carnal and
queer, intricate and involved, they range from the heart-breaking
Sturgeon Award finalist “Dance at the Edge,” to the historically
authentic, Tiptree short-listed “The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di
Pietro Cavazzi,” to the subtle, original “The Heloise Archive,” in
which the rewriting of the eleventh-century abbess’s life story
dramatically alters the course of European history. Like all of
Duchamp’s work, this fiction is passionate, feminist, and intelligent.
Advance Praise
"This handful of SF tales demonstrates superbly what the
genre can really do. Rich with social resonance, these stories elicit the
thrill of ideas struggling to manifest as pure drama. Duchamp writes some
of the most rewarding science fiction stories you can read today; she is
simply and unarguably among the best."
— Samuel
R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and Nova
"These stories create a delicate choreography of
longing, love and loss. They continue to perform in the mind long after
you’ve turned the last page."
— Nalo
Hopkinson, author of The Salt Roads and Brown Girl in
the Ring
Reviews
Duchamp's five unusual, provocative love stories featuring
strong, memorable heroines can haunt a reader long after the
last page is turned. In "Dance at the Edge," Emma Persimmon
doggedly pursues the woman of her dreams, a dedicated
physicist with the uncanny ability to see other
realities. "The Gift" explores gender and human existence
beyond the strictures of the male-female model. "The
Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi" acquaints us
with an unusually talented servant girl who discovers her
strength and power in woman-magic. Dark and compelling, "Lord
Enoch's Revels" fairly bleeds upon the page, mirroring the
anguish of its protagonist, Sybil. "The Heloise Archive"
retells the tragic story of Heloise and Abelard but includes
Heloise's regular visitation by the angel Nuntia, come to
purge Christ's message of the church's drastic alterations of
it over the centuries, in the end—a real
corker—the history of Europe is radically changed. Each
tale is a polished gem, reflecting human nature in all its
goodness and ugliness, and inviting deeper inspection of
cherished belief systems and re-exploration of the big
questions of relationships with ourselves, others, and
God. Supremely intelligent and confident, Duchamp infuses her
consistently sensual prose with mystery and beauty. Moreover,
it is unpredictable—so emotionally and conceptually
multifaceted that there is no fast track through one of her
stories.
— Paula Luedtke,
The Booklist, March 1, 2004
Putting together a top 10 list isn’t always a
cakewalk. The last 12 months yielded a bumper crop of outstanding sf
and
fantasy, and it took a lot of boiling down and a little arbitrariness
to
select just 10 instead of a dozen, or 15, or even 20. ...Duchamp’s five
unpredictable, haunting love stories, which feature strong, memorable
heroines, provoke deeper inspection of cherished belief systems and
re-exploration of the big questions of relationships with ourselves,
others, and God.
— Ray
Olson, "Spotlight on SF/Fantasy," The Booklist, April 15, 2004
Love's Body, Dancing In Time is a collection of five love
stories showcasing the talent and imagination of L. Timmel
Duchamp. Sensually charged, sometimes heart-breaking, this mind
and imagination engaging anthology includes the Sturgeon Award
finalist tale "Dance at the Edge", and the Tiptree short-listed
"The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi". Very highly
recommended reading, Love's Body, Dancing In Time is an
enthralling selection offering a unique perspective on the
power of timeless beauty of human bonds.
—
Midwest Book
Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, April 2004
Love's Body, Dancing in Time is a first-rate collection from the
provocative L. Timmel Duchamp. There are two fine reprints and three new
stories. "Lord Enoch's Revels" is a brief evocation of a mysterious and
erotically charged party. "The Heloise Archive" is a collection of letters
from Heloise to Abelard, with "contemporary" commentary: slowly we learn
that in this alternate history Heloise has, with the help of a strange
visitor, changed the place of women much for the better. The best new story
is "The Gift", in which a maker of travel documentaries in a future
Galactic society falls in love with a young singer on a world she is
visiting, only to fall afoul of this world's different mores about art,
identity, choice, and discipline.
—
Rich Horton, Locus, Issue 519, Vol. 52, No. 4, April 2004
...But what of the heroine's quest? Local author L. Timmel Duchamp provides a
few models in her luminous new story collection, Love's Body, Dancing in
Time.
In "Dance at the Edge," Emma Persimmon seeks knowledge and sexual
fulfillment from the same person: Viola Knight, student of Optics. Emma's
curiosity about the interdimensional portals no one else around her will
acknowledge and her desire for Viola's touch drive her first to
distraction, then to physical pursuit.
"The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi" recounts a more internal
journey. A young servant in 17th-century Bologna uses sorcery to force the
nobleman who impregnated her to honor his promise that they would
marry. Duchamp details Isabetta's careful gathering of arcane materials
— a hangman's rope, the dried blood of a thief — convincingly; if
witches had lived in Renaissance Italy, this is surely what they would've
gone through. Gradually, Isabetta realizes what her spell's true cost will
be. "The Gift" and "The Heloise Archives" also deal unconventionally with
the romantic adventure. These heroine's quests lead in one case to bitter
regrets, in the other to the founding of a new religious order and an
alternate course of history.
Writer and critic Samuel R. Delany calls Duchamp "simply and unarguably
among the best." As she explores the literary roles that women adopt, she's
among the most daring and the most delightfully rewarding as well.
— Nisi Shawl, Seattle Times,
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Duchamp's stories are ambitious, deeply felt, and carefully and often
beautifully written, and her thematic emphasis on love makes this a more
unified book than can usually be expected of a collection.
— Mark Rich, NYRSF,
January 2005
This handful of SF tales demonstrates superbly what the
genre can really do. Rich with social resonance, these stories elicit
the thrill of ideas struggling to manifest as pure drama. Duchamp
writes some of the most rewarding science fiction stories you can read
today; she is simply and unarguably among the best.
— Samuel
R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and Nova
These stories create a delicate choreography of
longing, love and loss. They continue to perform in the mind long after
you’ve turned the last page.
— Nalo
Hopkinson, author of The Salt Roads and Brown Girl in
the Ring
...It’s a remarkable achievement to turn edges into
seams
at the turn of a few words, and Duchamp does this throughout the
collection. Love’s Body, Dancing in Time creates curious little
ornithopters of story and sets them free, allowing feminism’s
speculations
to come into play. (read the whole review)
— Alan
DeNiro, The Sideshow, August 10, 2004
ISBN: 978-0-9746559-1-8 (13 digit)
Publication Date: 2004.04.01
paperback 200 pages
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