A penetrating study of a beautiful and recklessly sensual woman, in the money-mad world of 19th century Paris
From the back:
Beautiful but evil, Renee abandoned herself to the drug of erotic sensation just as Nana abandoned’ herself to the love of gold.
Thirsting for new pleasures, when she looked upon her precocious young stepson, Renee felt “the fatal summons experienced by one looking over a precipice, an unknown joyance, hot with crime, more’ violent than all she had already drained, the last that remained in her cup. ”