I have been waiting for this book for almost 2 years. It did not disappoint me. I found it to be a profound book, although not necessarily a pleasant book. It caused me to re-think my relationships, perhaps even re-think myself. The 48 Laws of Power is the "bible of power". This is less general but more profound, which may be why it is unnerving. I have stopped reading the Joost Elffers sidebars, although I might in the future when I want a more light-hearted experience. I read a lot of books. My library is embarrassingly large. However, I do have a mental list of the few books that I would take to the proverbial desert island. This is one of them, and it is ironic that I would do this even though there would be no one else on the island to seduce. This book is a synthesis of philosophy and psychology, and is paradigm breaking. Freud must have had a similar unnerving effect on his contemporaries when he discussed premises for behavior that were perviously not part of social discourse.
I did not find the book to be amoral or manipulative. I found it to have a different morality than that which is instilled in us by convention. The book celebrates non-possessive intimacy, and describes the mindset that is the prerequisite to such an experience. I am struggling for words to express this, but it is as if there were more than one dimension to a relationship, a human bonding. We are used to relationships that are symetrical in time and depth: they are either shallow and brief, or they are deep and eternal. Greene describes a variation that is brief and deep. This is what differentiates this book from the tawdry.
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