Joanna Smith Rakoff likes Julianna Baggott's The Madam -- I did, too, when I reviewed it last summer for the Washington Post, and for the same reason: there was nothing sexy about it. The prose, to borrow Gore Vidal's description of his own The City and the Pillar is "plain and hard," and also strangely dream-like, very Sanctuary in feel, but very much the author's own.