- Incisive, controversial and startlingly funny, The Rules of Attraction examines a group of affluent students at a small, self-consciously bohemian, liberal-arts college on America"s East Coast. Lauren, who changes the man in her bed even more often than she changes course, is dating Victor but sleeping with Sean. Sean cool, ambivalent and deeply cynical might be in love with Lauren, but he"s not going to let that stop him from bedding Paul. Paul, as shrewd as he is passionate, is Lauren"s ex-lover and the final point in this curious triangle. This is a breathtaking tale of sex, expectation, desire and frustration. "A tour of the heart of darkness, a moral armageddon" The Times "Compelling... sympathetic to his "lost generation" the way only Fitzgerald was about his" Vanity Fair "One of the primary inside sources in upper-middle-class America"s continuing investigation of what has happened to its children" New York Times "Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel" Gore Vidal.