Liaisons for Laughs

Romps, Mischief, Pranks, and Legal Maneuvering

Angie & Ella are beautiful, bright, energetic, and fearless associates at a Manhattan law firm. They are fond of reliving their escapades, as well as concocting new ones, via email. Entirely epistolary, Liaisons for Laughs chronicles their frolics in the summer of 2003. Told in a gleefully sassy tone, and always rich with humor, their adventures include 'Trailer Trollop Romp & Martin's Comeuppance,' 'Harlot Impersonation, a Cab Ride, & Pink Grapefruit Tarts,' 'Circumstances of Spying,' and 'Romance Novel Hell.'

Equally concerned with furthering their careers and indulging their penchant for pleasure and pranking, Angie & Ella tell of both in a unique vocabulary, each seeking to keep pace with the other with the verbal pyrotechnics of their emails. With the frequent participation of their shared boyfriend Steven, as well as Manhattan itself, they hungrily fling themselves into a flurry of vamping, masquerading, and fantasy roles--never neglecting to get their work done on time and keep the partners happy.

    

"Licentious. Salacious. Those rich, naughty, mannered words from another era are given a cunning and contemporary twist in Leyse's reinvigoration of a classic literary form--the epistolary. At a time when so many 'real life' intimacies are overlooked because we're too tired to be seduced or to instigate some imaginative new direction in our mortgage anxious relationships, it's refreshing to be reminded of the pleasures, prurient and also just plain human and often very funny, of overhearing other people's intimacies. Fun and eroticism don't go together nearly often enough. They do in Leyse tit for tat. This is clever, humane, word-sensual writing." - Kris Saknussemm