Article: FICTION; Sex and love - the eternal muddle; Jim Crace's latest antihero is passively potent.(ENTERTAINMENT)

Byline: Kristin Tillotson; Staff Writer

Felix (Lix) Dern is a marked man, inside and out. A popular 47-year-old actor who lives in the oppressed, unidentified City of Kisses, Lix sports a large red birthmark on his cheek that women, instead of being repelled, view as an "invitation to be tender." He is also afflicted with a curse that would have been considered an asset in Cro-Magnon days: Every woman he has sex with winds up pregnant, most recently his second wife, Mouetta, whose name suggests lips pursed in a perpetual sulk. When her husband's seed makes its inevitable connection with her egg, she wonders if he will "be a swan and stay, or be a dog and run."

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