The book is also about illicit passion..
rbbm.
http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-16/books/bk-1572_1_joyce-carol-oates
"In the Stevick family, father Lyle is a family man, resigned to his life as a used-furniture store owner. He and wife Hannah have four children: Geraldine, who gets pregnant and must marry; Warren, who fights in Korea; promiscuous Lizzie, who shames her parents by becoming a nightclub singer; and Enid, the youngest, the one with the aspirin.
Enid is quiet, intelligent and always well-behaved. But privately she struggles with a darker self, her alter ego, whom she calls "Angel-Face." This darker self tempts her to steal trinkets from stores, to enjoy men's glances on the street.
When Enid is 14, her Uncle Felix, who is twice her age, seduces her. Felix "the Cat" is a retired middleweight boxing champion. Envied and scorned by Lyle, his half-brother, Felix is dark, brooding and glamorous. He gambles, womanizes and lives dangerously. Enid falls in love with him, and when he ignores her, she writes him a note saying, "
Felix I want to die. I love you so much." When he still doesn't respond, she becomes obsessed with the idea of committing suicide. She longs for death to the point where commonplace things evoke a death call. She feels it in the pull of the undertow at Lake Shoal and sees it in the complex pattern of her bedroom wallpaper.
Felix, taken by her willingness to die for him, comes back to her, and they carry on a passionate, destructive love affair. These are four years of erotic, violent scenes in the back seats of cars and
cheap hotel rooms on the outskirts of town"
