Review Tuesday: In Another Place by Susan Mailer - #memoir #ReviewTuesday #NormanMailer

In Another Place: With and without my father Norman Mailer by Susan Mailer

Northampton House Press, 2019

I don’t usually read memoirs—in particular, the sensational and exploitative memoirs often penned by the children of celebrities. However, In Another Place was highly recommended by a close friend. Meanwhile, I’ve always found Norman Mailer intriguing. Brilliant author, legendary bad boy, respected intellectual and feminist whipping post, his influence still looms large over twentieth century culture. I will admit to being curious to see him through the eyes of his eldest daughter.

Susan Mailer’s memoir could hardly be further from those whining exposés I try to avoid. Rather, it is a delicately balanced, emotionally subtle account of the author’s complicated relationship with a father who clearly loved her but was not always successful in expressing this love, either in words or in deeds. The author avoids hysterics and hyperbole. Her account is dignified and restrained, even when she’s recounting severely traumatic events. Nevertheless, one closes the book with a strong sense of both Susan herself and her paradoxical parent. Her measured treatment does not mute the memoir’s powerful impact.

I suspect that this was difficult book to write. The awkward title encapsulates the problem. Ms. Mailer spent her childhood and teen years shuttling between two countries and two cultures: vibrant, sociable Mexico, where her mother lived and practiced medicine, and trendy, competitive New York, her father’s domain. Wherever she was, she felt the pull of her other life. Of course, children of divorced patterns often experience this sort of conflict. In her case, geographic distance and her father’s fame exacerbated the pain of the split. Hence the memoir’s subtitle. Including the name “Norman Mailer” is more than just a ploy to sell books. As the child of an acknowledged literary genius, Ms. Mailer felt special pressure to impress her father with her intelligence, her talent and her “guts”. At the same time, she was trying to find her way as an individual, to build a life in which she was more than just “Norman Mailer’s daughter”.

It took great courage for the author to revisit her psychologically turbulent early years as she does in this volume.

The book also explores the destructive effects of fame on private life and personal relationships. Norman Mailer, it appears, sometimes believed in his own myth. Propelled into the limelight before he was thirty by his best-selling debut novel The Naked and the Dead, he faced the problem of topping his own personal best. Ms. Mailer does not shy away from portraying his egotism as well as his insecurity. At the same time, she shows how sincere he could be, how charming, loving and generous, as well as diligent, almost driven, when it came to his writing.

In Another Place follows a linear trajectory in time, starting just before Susan’s birth and stretching to her father’s death in 2007. The book includes many of the well-known (and sometimes infamous) incidents in Mailer’s life: his stabbing of his second wife; his run for Mayor of New York; the ad-lib weekend making the experimental film “Maidstone”, including his violent brawl with co-star Rip Torn; the infamous Town Hall- “A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation” - where Mailer moderated, and baited, a panel of renowned feminists. However, Ms. Mailer also chronicles other, more private moments with her father: ski weekends in Vermont, bullfights in Mexico, late night conversations, angry tantrums, and memorably, fun- and love-filled visits at the “Big House” in Provincetown, where Norman Mailer played benevolent patriarch to his nine children and their offspring. The portrait that emerges is fascinating, nuanced and multi-faceted, enlightened by the author’s professional knowledge as a practicing psychoanalyst as well as by the insights and perspective that come with age.

The description above might suggest that this is a book about Norman Mailer, but in fact Susan herself is at the center of the tale. The memoir is an effort to put her own life in perspective, using the mirror of her relationship, to reconcile the fact that she will always be Norman Mailer’s daughter with the recognition that she is much more.

I have not said much about the writing. Ms. Mailer’s prose is crisp, concise and evocative. The structure of the book balances drama with history in a pleasing alternation. The author’s reminiscences do not shy away from negative emotion but are never self-indulgent.

In short, I was deeply impressed by this brave, honest, skillfully crafted work. Even if you’re generally not a fan of memoirs, I recommend it.

Review Tuesday: Tragic Coolness by Giselle Renarde #poetry #tragiclove #ReviewTuesday

Tragic Coolness by Giselle Renarde

October, 2018

As Tatyana – Tats to her family – and her sister Oka pick berries in their family orchard, two figures approach from the distance. One is Oka’s lover, Len – a transman who has captured blonde lesbian Oka’s heart and imagination. Tagging along is a stranger, Len’s acquaintance Eugene Onegin.

Tats has a strong urge to run. Some intuition warns her that this newcomer will bring tragedy and pain. Before she can escape, however, he has joined them, and she’s lost:

She looked at him, and he looked at her, and her heart nearly exploded. Attractive and poetic. She hadn’t met a man like him since university. Men like this were bad news then, but Tats was older now. Maybe she would handle herself a little better, a little more like an adult and less like an obsessive teen.

Aside from being young and handsome, Eugene is elegant, cultured, cynical, and terminally bored with life. “E is Eugene who died of ennui,” Tats jokes during their first meeting, but she turns out to be right. Her premonition of heartbreak comes to pass as she succumbs to her desperate, visceral attraction. Their incandescent coupling convinces her that she has finally found her soul mate. Eugene, however, is gone when she wakes, leaving her without a word but with (as she discovers later) a most permanent memento: a child growing in her womb.

Eugene’s abandonment tears Tats apart. The next time he shows up, she tries to tell him about her pregnancy, but his clear disinterest in love or family make her hold her tongue. Devastation and death follow Eugene wherever he wanders. After he is responsible for a fatal accident involving his friend Len, he disappears from Tatyana’s life for nearly a decade. When he steps back onto the scene, he discovers that everything has changed – that he now fiercely craves the woman he discarded in the past, but that she is forever beyond his reach.

Giselle Renarde is best known as an author of erotica, often queer or kinky, but her talents are too creative and diverse to be pigeon-holed. Tragic Coolness is a remarkable book, evocative and compelling, unquestionably a literary feat. It is in fact a re-imagining of Alexander Pushkin’s classic verse novel EugeneOnegin, the source of many literary references including Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. However, with contemporary allusions and LGBTQ themes, Ms. Renarde has made the material distinctly her own. Still, there are echoes of poetry in the dialogue. The rhythm of the prose owes much to art, and might be expected to distance the reader from the characters, but that does not happen. Tatyana and Eugene remain real and believable despite the deliberate craft evident in the novella’s structure.

After reading Tragic Coolness, I became quite curious about the original. The translations I’ve found thus far have been turgid and opaque, but I have some hope of locating a version that helps me better understand Ms. Renarde’s inspiration.

Tragic Coolness is not a casual book designed primarily for entertainment. The title is apt; the ending is far darker than most erotica or romance readers might like. Nevertheless, I recommend it. It offers a deeper sort of satisfaction that will stay with you after you’ve forgotten your latest happily-ever-afters.

Review Tuesday: The Russia House - #ReviewTuesday #literaryfiction #genrefiction

The Russia House by John le Carré

Alfred A. Knopf Limited, 1989

Whenever I read a novel by John le Carré, I am reminded that the distinction between genre and literary fiction is totally artificial. Le Carré is renowned for his long career as an author of “spy fiction”. However, every one of his books bears the marks of serious literature: fluid, precise and evocative prose; vivid, complex characterization; innovative narrative structures; and perhaps most important, attention to serious themes. Few authors explore the moral ambiguities of politics and society as acutely as le Carré. Furthermore, he demonstrates how these thorny issues ultimately arise from individuals, their choices and their behavior, though always in the context of the institutions to which those people are bound.

The Russia House was written and published during the years of perestroika, when the Berlin wall was crumbling and the Cold War appeared to be in a state of thaw. I expect that its insights and its irony seemed particularly cogent at that time, but even now, the novel retains its impact. In fact, in this era of polarization, fake news and manipulated identities, it seems almost prescient.

The story centers on British publisher Scott Blair, aka “Barley”, who in mid-life is a brilliant, charming, well-educated failure. Barley’s long history of drunkenness, indebtedness, broken marriages and broken promises has led him to flee England and take refuge with his latest lady-friend in Lisbon.

Kept on a short rein by the aunts who bankroll his publishing company, Barley has been a frequent visitor to Russia. The West is eager to strike deals there, in the new spirit of cooperation and openness, translating Russian gems as well as pushing previously unavailable English books. On one of his Russian jaunts, at a vodka-soaked gathering of authors and intelligentsia, Barley has a lengthy, late night conversation with a remarkable man calling himself Goethe. Although Goethe’s intellect and passion deeply impress him, Barley more or less forgets the encounter until the British spy agency ferrets him out and forces him into service.

It appears that Goethe is actually a top Russian scientist, who has written a critical book exposing the incompetence and fraud in the Soviet nuclear missile program. But in spycraft, nothing is ever as “it appears”. The explosive revelations and technical detail in Goethe’s book could fundamentally change the balance of power—increasing the chances of peace, or of war, depending on whom you talk to. The government and its minions need to know whether the material is genuine or a hoax designed to undermine the readiness of the West. Goethe trusts only Barley—he directed his manuscript to Barley, urging him to publish it, and it’s only by accident that the book ends up in the hands of the authorities. Hence Barley, mercurial, shiftless, tortured by inner demons, must be trained in espionage and sent to meet the reticent author.

This skeleton of the plot omits many complexities and a number of important characters, all of whom le Carré sketches with a deft, sure hand. In particular, there’s the shadowy figure of Palfrey, legal advisor to the British spooks, who acts as the almost invisible narrator for the novel. Palfrey sees himself mirrored in Barley; he’s the silent, conflicted observer who always takes the easy way out. Unlike Barley, he does not achieve redemption.

Then there’s Katya, Goethe’s one-time lover, who is serves as the conduit to the reclusive scientist. I will allow readers to discover her on their own.

I was struck, as I often am in reading le Carré, by the absence of rapid action, violent confrontations and feats of derring-do so prominent in modern spy thrillers. As Palfrey notes, “spying is waiting”, and spycraft is far more of an intellectual than a physical exercise. There’s violence in this book, but it’s hidden in overtly civil conversations. In particular, a scene in which the American CIA (who seize control of the operation from the more civilized Brits) administers a polygraph test to Barley made me shudder. (I am certain that was the author’s intention.)

One of the delights in this book is the author’s rich portrayal of Russia and the Russian people. As they deal with shortages, crumbling infrastructure, corruption and fear of State repression, they remain resourceful, brave, warm-hearted and sociable—even idealistic. It’s clear that le Carré has deep knowledge of, and abiding love for, Russia. The British characters fare more poorly, and the Americans worst of all.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It also filled me with new admiration for its author. It’s far more than just a throwaway piece of genre fiction.

I would really love to see John le Carré get the respect he deserves.

Review Tuesday: The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle - #ReviewTuesday #rightwing #amreading

The Harder They Come by T. C. Boyle

Bloomsbury, 2015

Retired high school principal and ex-Marine Sten Stenson is vacationing in Costa Rica with his wife Coralee when their tour bus is hijacked by a trio of thugs. As the native gang threatens the group of senior citizens with knives and a gun, Sten’s military training takes over. On automatic, he grabs one of their attackers by the throat to immobilize him, ultimately choking the other man to death. To his fellow cruise passengers, Sten’s a hero, but all sorts of unpleasantness follows as he is forced to deal with the authorities and make moral compromises.

Sara Hovarty Jennings is a sovereign citizen. A forty-something divorcee who struggles with her weight, she works hard at her job as a farrier, takes meticulous care of her own personal property, loves her shaggy dog Kutya, and just wants to be left alone. She doesn’t pay taxes. She won’t register or insure her car just because the government says she must. She sure as hell isn’t going to wear a seat belt just because some law requires it. One evening she’s stopped by the police on California Route 20. She refuses to get out of the car as the officer demands. She ends up in jail overnight, with her car impounded and Kutya in quarantine because he hasn’t been vaccinated for rabies as the law demands.

Adam Stenson, Sten’s son, has always been a problem child. Now in his twenties, he’s living in a cabin in the northern California forest, drinking grain alcohol, growing drugs and becoming progressively less connected with reality. He identifies with, and takes the name of, the legendary mountain man John Colter. He’s determined to be as tough and crafty as his hero, to fight against the “aliens” who want to control him, to live free in the wilderness no matter what the cost.

When Sara encounters Adam, she persuades him to help her free her dog from the pound. They become lovers. Though Adam is peculiar, emotionally volatile, maybe dangerous, a bond develops between them. Everything unravels, though, when Adam, in the throes of his Colter-inspired hallucinations, shoots and kills two local men.

T.C. Boyle’s brilliant novel The Harder They Come revolves around these three rather extreme characters. Their beliefs and their actions should make them seem repugnant, or at least very foreign to someone like me, who espouses rather liberal political views. It is a measure of Boyle’s genius that he managed to make me feel sympathy for and warmth toward all three of theme, even the homicidal lunatic Adam.

In the real world I might label these people as right wing kooks. Boyle conveys their emotions with such conviction and their philosophies with such apparent logic that I found myself actually agreeing with them, at least to some extent. I admired Sara’s independence and courage. I felt Sten’s frustration with his aging body and his helpless despair in the face of his son’s psychological impairment, and understood how these feelings could engender deadly anger. I even could understand why Adam felt as he did, why he was so inspired by Colter, in a world where true agency is so difficult to achieve.

It took me a long time to finish The Harder They Come—more than a month, though of course I was reading quite a few other books concurrently. I found that I didn’t want to consume more than one or two chapters at a sitting, not because the book didn’t pull me in, but because I felt I needed a break to digest and to appreciate what I’d just read.

Boyle’s prose is so compact, so evocative, so precisely targeted, that one cannot help but marvel. He’s an expert at conveying the natural world as well as human emotions and behavior. The Harder They Come is set well north of San Francisco, near Mendocino and Fort Bragg, among the redwoods and the rednecks. The area used to be a thriving center of the logging industry, but that prosperity is long gone. Now Mexican gangs grow pot deep in the woods, the old rail line is used for tourist jaunts, the locals struggle, and everyone wonders what the future will bring.

The book beautifully conveys the natural beauty of the area, the wildness that still exists. It also evokes the quiet desperation of the people who inhabit the region, a desperation that expresses itself in prejudice and violence. Boyle focuses on Sten, Sara and Adam, makes them real, living, breathing human beings, but he’s also clear that they’re products of their time and environment. The Harder They Come could be viewed as a microcosm of contemporary American society, a cautionary tale on the consequences of extremism.

But Boyle isn’t on a soap box. He never is. He’s just painting pictures, encouraging us to draw our own conclusions. That’s why I feel that this novel is important. It goes beyond the stereotypes, probes more deeply into how these people—“these people” whom in another context I might be tempted to label as the enemy, as alien to me as the guys Adam murders—reason, think and feel. And my conclusion is that ultimately, we’re not that different after all.

Maybe more so-called liberal Americans should read this book.

Review Tuesday: Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris - #ReviewTuesday #fantasy #memory

Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris

Black Swan, 2000

Like many readers, I often make my purchase decisions based on a quick perusal of a book’s first paragraphs. Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris hooked me with the very first sentence:

Wine talks.

She continues:

Everyone knows that. Look around you. Ask the oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding; the holy fool. It talks. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew.

How could I not read further, as soon as it became clear that the narrator of this lush fantasy novel is a bottle of wine? A Fleurie 1962, to be exact, bottled in the same year as the novel’s protagonist, thirty seven year old Jay Mackintosh. As the novel proceeds, you tend to forget the wine is speaking, but every now and then the sharing of a special bottle unleashes some particular magic and you remember.

In his twenties, Jay wrote one prize winning novel, based on three golden summers in his teens spent under the tutelage of “Jackapple” Joe Cox. A coal miner retired after losing several fingers, Joe lived in a run-down district by the rail line, cultivating his remarkable garden, telling tall tales, instructing, entertaining, challenging and infuriating his young apprentice. Jay visited during the summers to escape the wreckage of his parents’ marriage, and Joe filled some need in him that no one else could.

The literary world lavished its praise on that first novel, but Jay has never managed to write another. He drifts through life, nagged by his manipulative girlfriend Kerry, trying without success to write something “serious”. Jay makes a decent living penning lurid scifi stories under a pseudonym, but the inspiration that fueled his first creation has died. That is, until one night when he opens one of six ancient bottles of Joe’s fruit wine and something wild and true rekindles in his soul.

With totally uncharacteristic decisiveness, he purchases a crumbling farmhouse and vineyard in rural France—because this was Joe’s dream—and rushes off to take possession. Thus he becomes part of the community, and the story, of the village of Lansquenet, and the variant inhabitants become part of his own. In particular, his mysterious neighbor Marise D’Api teases and haunts his imagination. Everyone in town tells different tales about the reclusive widow and her deaf daughter.

The book flips back and forth between Jay’s summers with Joe and his present in France. Gradually, Ms. Harris unfolds the truth of Jay’s relationship with Joe, the ache of betrayal Jay still feels more than two decades later. Still, with every page, the author encourages us to question what is “truth”. Is there such a thing, or are there only a variety of stories?

I adored Blackberry Wine, even more than Ms. Harris’ famous Chocolat, for which this book forms a loose sequel. The writing is gorgeous, full of vivid sense impressions. The characters jump out from the page, quirky and distinctive. Most of all, I cherished the sense of everyday magic with which the author infuses the story. Are Joe’s special wines powerful potions that bring dreams to life? Or do they do no more than summon memory and coax the spirit toward something new?

Highly recommended!

Charity Sunday: Room for Reading - #CharitySunday #Literacy #NewRelease

Welcome to this month’s Charity Sunday! Like most authors, I’ve always been an avid reader. A love of books and reading is one of the most valuable gifts one can give to young people – simultaneously a deep pleasure and an invaluable tool for survival.

Hence, this month, I am supporting Room to Read, an organization promoting literacy, education and gender equality worldwide, but especially in lower income countries. Their motto: World Change Starts with Educated Children. 

Since it was founded in 2000, Room to Read has constructed over 1,900 schools and established more than 17,000 libraries. The charity has published more than 1,100 original local language children’s titles and distributing over 15.5 million books. More than 31,000 girls have received enhanced educational opportunities and life skills training. Overall, Room to Read has impacted the lives of more than 10 million children, in places like Laos, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and South Africa.

As is usual on Charity Sundays, I will donate one dollar for each comment I receive on this post, between now and next month's Charity Sunday. So if you’re here, reading this – take a minute or two to comment. It doesn’t cost you a penny to do a bit of good for the world.

Of course, I’m also here to entertain you and make your visit worthwhile. Here’s a bit from my taboo erotic romance Miranda’s Masks. The choice seems appropriate since my heroine Miranda Cahill is a graduate student working on her PhD in literature.

In this exclusive excerpt, Miranda meets the hero, and explains her unconventional dissertation topic.

The grizzled head of Harold Scofield poked through the door. “Hello, Miranda. I am sorry to intrude, but I have someone to whom I would like to introduce you.” Miranda smiled to herself; her genial thesis advisor always sounded like a grammar textbook. The gray-bearded figure in suspenders bustled in, followed by an attractive young man in dark-framed eyeglasses.

“Miranda, I would like to present Mark Anderson, our new lecturer. Mark will be handling the Dickens course for the summer session.”

“Mark, this is Miranda Cahill, my most promising graduate student.” Miranda blushed, and Dr. Scofield’s eyes twinkled. “Miranda has chosen a rather controversial topic for her thesis, a new interpretation of the corpus of Victorian erotica.”

The newcomer’s polite smile expanded to a grin. “Really. That’s fascinating. Sounds far more—stimulating—than my dissertation on the metaphorical significance of orphans in Dickens and his contemporaries.”

Miranda’s blush deepened as she noted the double entendre. She met his teasing gaze, almost defiantly. “Yes, it is an intriguing topic, and I believe one of considerable literary and social significance, as well.” He had thick, dark hair, slightly tousled. His eyes behind the glasses were velvety brown with glints of gold. In his face, she saw intelligence, energy, and humor.

“Miranda has championed an unusual theory, that the explosion of sexually-oriented writing during the latter half of the nineteenth century was a reflection of actual practices, rather than a reaction against repressive public morals.” Her advisor appeared to be enjoying the role of agent provocateur. “She believes that the detailed accounts of sexual adventure and aberration published during the era chronicled real experiences, not merely fantasies.”

“Hmm.” Their bespectacled companion looked both amused and interested. “What evidence do you have to support this proposition?”

“Well, to begin with,” said Miranda, automatically adopting an academic tone, “a significant fraction of these writings are first person accounts. And a surprising number are related from a woman’s perspective. If this were primarily a literature of fantasy and titillation, I would expect a male point-of-view to dominate, as it does in modern pornography.” Miranda was encouraged to see that her audience listened attentively and gave due consideration to her points.

“Secondly, these tales are full of real-world details and commentary that would be superfluous and even distracting in fictional erotica. The protagonists discuss social issues such as poverty, child abuse, oppression of the lower classes, things that can only detract from a work intended as escapist fantasy. Even a hack pornographer knows better than to mention the unpleasant or the mundane, illegitimate pregnancies, unpaid bills, rising damp. Yet references to such items are common in the corpus.

“Finally, I find in many of these writings a thoughtfulness that conflicts with the conventions of the pornographic genre. The narrators are engaged in a wide variety of sexual activities, which are described in vivid and provocative detail. At the same time, in many cases, they reflect on their own desires and behaviors, sometimes justifying themselves in the face of the official morality, sometimes castigating themselves for weakness and sinfulness. Either way, there is a psychological depth that would be redundant in fictional erotica.”

“So, what you are saying,” interposed Mark with a grin, “is that a fictional character would simply go ahead and bugger his maid, whereas an individual writing a clandestine diary would spend some time and effort wondering why he wanted to bugger his maid, before he got around to actually doing it?”

“No, no, that’s not it at all!” Miranda, embarrassed and flustered, wondered if the new instructor had been reading her manuscript over her shoulder. Her eyes flashed. “You’re not willing to take me seriously, any more than the submission review committee for the Association for Modern Literature!”

“Now, Miranda,” soothed her advisor. “Mark was just teasing you.” Looking again at the attractive stranger, Miranda saw that Scofield was telling the truth.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” Mark held out his hand like a peace offering. “I really am delighted to meet you. Your theory is unconventional and provocative, but who knows, it might actually be true.” His skin was cool and dry, the pressure of his fingers firm and confident. “Let me take you out for coffee, and you can tell me more about what your research has turned up thus far.”

As he released her hand, he brushed his fingers lightly against her palm.

The secret, sensual gesture terrified her. Miranda found herself reacting as she so often did in the presence of a man who desired her. She felt herself tense, contract, her fears and uncertainties condensing into a dense, cold knot under her solar plexus. Her face was stiff and wooden as she tried to smile. “Thank you, but I can’t right now. I have an incredible amount of work to get done.”

“Diligent, industrious Miranda,” her advisor scolded her lightly. “You need to take more time for yourself. It is Saturday, after all.”

“Thanks, but I need to work harder. I need more evidence to support my theory. Deeper study, of a larger number of texts.”

“Please…” Mark began, disappointment plain in his voice. Then he saw clearly that she would not be swayed. “Well, maybe another time.” He smiled so warmly that the icy knot thawed slightly. “I definitely would like to get to know you better, Miranda.”

~~~

Barring any unforeseen issues, the book should be out at the end of the week. Don’t worry, I’ll let everyone know!

Meanwhile... why not leave a comment and share the gift of reading?

https://www.roomtoread.org/

Review Tuesday: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (#lgbtq #literature #ReviewTuesday)

The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters

Virago Press, 2006

In 1999, Sarah Waters' first novel TIPPING THE VELVET caused a minor sensation. A rich, sprawling tale of Sapphic love in the world of Victorian music halls and secret "women's clubs", TIPPING THE VELVET managed to be outrageously sexy while retaining impeccable literary credentials. Ms. Waters went on to publish two additional books that vividly evoke the Victorian period, the FINGERSMITH (my personal favorite) and AFFINITY. Both focus on lesbian relationships, though they are generally less graphic than Ms. Waters' debut novel.

THE NIGHT WATCH is a very different beast. Set in London during and after the Second World War, it follows the tangled social and emotional ties among three women and one man. Kay is a dominant, mannish person who drives an ambulance during the Blitz, racing out bravely with her comrades to rescue the victims of the bombs that slam London every night. Helen is her submissive, feminine lover, rescued from a destroyed building and sheltered by Kay. Beautiful Viv is hopelessly faithful to Reggie, a married soldier that she met on a train. Duncan, Viv's younger brother, is a shy, sensitive person who might or might not be gay. Over the course of the book we get to know these people, learn their secrets and understand what each one means to the others.

Despite the bombs and the emotional cataclysms, THE NIGHT WATCH is a quieter book than any of Ms. Waters' previous work. Ms. Waters makes the audacious decision to tell her story backwards in time. The book begins in 1947, three years after the war. Kay is a lonely ghost, haunting the streets of London. Helen and Viv work together at a marriage agency, while Duncan is the star performer at a factory for the disabled and the companion of a fussy older man who believes in Christian Science. Over the book's 472 pages, the story retreats to 1944, and then to 1940, when the Germans bombed London for fifty seven nights in a row and killed more than 40,000 civilians. Only at the very end of the novel do we discover how Kay met Helen, and understand the intensity of Kay's need, a need that leaves her empty and haunted when Helen forsakes her for another lover.

THE NIGHT WATCH does not include much explicit sex; it really does not qualify as erotica. However it overflows with desire, hidden and overt, especially the desire that links women even when society forbids such connections. Ms. Waters understands how the physical stirs the emotions, how some quirk of appearance or manner can catch the heartstrings.

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Kay whistled. 'How glamorous you look! Just like Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel.'

She didn't look glamorous really, however; she looked young, and small and rather solemn. The room was cold, and the satin chill; she shivered and blew on her hands. She worked again at folding back the sleeves, almost fretfully - gazing once, as she did it, into the mirror, and then turning quickly away.

Kay watched her, with a sort of ache about her heart. She felt her love, at moments like this, as a thing of wonder - it was wonderful to her, that Helen, who was so lovely, so fair and unmarked, should be here at all, to be looked at and touched... Then again, it was impossible to imagine her in any other place, with any other lover. No other lover, Kay knew, would feel about her quite as Kay did. She might have been born, been a child, grown up - done all the particular, serious and inconsequential things she'd done - just so she could arrive at this point, now; just so she could stand, barefoot, in a satin pyjama-suit, and Kay could watch her.

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THE NIGHT WATCH is not as flashy a book as FINGERSMITH, but as a writer I found myself awed by Ms. Waters' mastery of her craft. Even in the first pages of the book, I was struck by how vividly she could evoke the gritty, tired, ruined world of London after the war.

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A train ran by, two streets away, heading into Clapham Junction; she felt the thrill and shudder of it in the sill beneath her arms. The bulb in a lamp behind her shoulder sprang into life, flickered for a a second like an irritated eye, and then went out. ...

The room was dim. Some of the window glass had been lost, and Mr. Leonard had replaced it with lino. The bed was high, with a balding candlewick bedspread: the sort of bed that turned your thoughts, not pleasantly, to the many people who must, over the years, have slept on it, made love on it, been born on it, died on it, thrashed around on it in fevers. It gave off a slightly sour scent, like the feet of worn stockings. But Kay was used to that, and didn't notice.

----------------------

The description simultaneously shapes one's view of the world surrounding the character, and with a single sentence, reveals the character's dark and empty state of mind.

Not everyone will enjoy THE NIGHT WATCH. If you are looking for the brilliant twists that made FINGERSMITH such a tour de force, you will be disappointed, though you'll find much of the same irony. If you miss the free-wheeling sexual exploits of TIPPING THE VELVET, you'll have to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, THE NIGHT WATCH is an achievement, and demonstrates that Ms. Waters' expertise is not limited to Victoria's time.

In a haunting sequence which I view as the centerpiece of the book, Helen and Kay's ex-lover Julia set out on a night journey across blacked out London. They pass demolished homes and deserted churches. All is still and dark, as if they were the only people alive in the world. When they kiss, you are almost ready to believe that this is true.

THE NIGHT WATCH is a serious and only occasionally sexy novel, but in my opinion, one not to be missed.

Review Tuesday: Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (#ReviewTuesday #literature #fantasy)

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

Vintage Contemporaries, 2009

A perpetual, impenetrable gray fog shrouds Wall Street and the rest of lower Manhattan. Artic temperatures chill the inhabitants of the city and fierce blizzards blanket the streets well into May. Above the skyscrapers, American and Russian astronauts orbit in a doomed space station, cut off from Earth by a deadly ring of Chinese mines. Meanwhile an enormous tiger stalks the streets and avenues, undermining buildings and wreaking havoc. No one has actually seen the tiger, but the Mayor’s office issues periodic reports and its traces crater neighborhoods all over the city.

In Jonathan Lethem’s New York, it’s impossible to know what’s real, what’s imagined and what’s fabricated by the insidious powers that be. Chronic City shows us this enigmatic city through the eyes of Chase Insteadman, refugee from Indiana and former child star on a classic TV series, now living an untethered existence as a perennial guest at dinner parties of Manhattan’s rich and powerful. Handsome, well-spoken, and unbelievably clueless and uncritical, Chase drifts through his mostly comfortable life without asking too many questions. His popularity is partly due to the fact that he’s engaged to marooned astronaut Janice Trumbull. His reactions to her tragic isolation offer a diversion over cocktails. In fact, he can barely remember Janice. Despite his guilt about his infidelity, he’s engaged in a torrid, difficult affair with a prickly ghostwriter named Oona Lazlo.

The setting is surreal. One might even label Chronic City science fiction. To me, however, the book is fundamentally a love story. Chase thinks he’s in love with Oona, but his true preoccupation is with the brilliant, cryptic cult figure Perkus Tooth. A dandified scarecrow of a man who favors wrinkled velvet suits, Perkus ventures outside the fortress of his rent-controlled apartment on Eighty-fourth Street only to indulge in cheeseburgers and coke at the diner down the block. Surrounded by art, books, and videos—stimulated by vast amounts of the most potent pot Chase has ever smoked—Perkus spins wild tales of conspiracy and transcendence that hold Chase rapt.

Chase’s fascination with Perkus struck me as the most believable part of Chronic City. I’ve personally experienced that sort of sudden attraction to people in my own life, people whose energy and charisma simply stop you in your tracks. Chase enters Perkus’ small circle, and under Tooth’s influence, he starts to question things he’d simply accepted previously. At the same time, he comes to realize how vulnerable his peculiar and insightful mentor really is. As the situation in the city deteriorates, Chase tries to save his friend from the dire consequences. His efforts trigger important changes in his own reality.

I’ve been a fan of Jonathan Lethem’s work since I read Gun, With Occasional Music more than a decade ago, so I was predisposed to like this book. Certainly it exhibits the same fertile and disturbing imagination that characterizes Lethem’s other novels. As the tale became darker, though, I found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable. I had to force myself to finish the story, and I’m glad that I did; though the ending could not be called exactly happy, it has a sort of soothing symmetry, with the satisfaction of some secrets revealed.

I probably couldn’t fully appreciate the novel, though, because I do not have a deep knowledge of New York City. I also didn’t recognize many of Perkus’ cultural references. Indeed, I couldn’t tell how many related to real people and how many were fabricated. Of course, this is part of the book’s point. What do we mean by “real”?

Chase provides a mirror for the madness around him. Seeing things through his eyes, the reader experiences his typical bewilderment and occasional passion. Unfortunately, there are several chapters where Lethem switched to Perkus Tooth’s point of view. I understand his motives; it would have been difficult to convey some aspects of the plot without this shift. However, I thought this narrative choice weakened the impact of the novel.

Overall, Chronic City is an original, frenetic, disconcerting tale, alternating between existential anxiety and manic glee. Though it was published eight years ago, it vividly depicts our current era of “fake news”. Despite its fantasy elements, Lethem’s New York feels all too familiar. Readers will wander its tiger-ravaged streets at their own risk.

Review Tuesday: Oysters and Pearls by @MitziSzereto (#erotica #vampires #review)

Oysters and Pearls: Collected Stories by Mitzi Szereto

Midnight Rain Publishing, 2016

Novels are beads strung on a wire, a sequence of events linked by character and intention into a harmonious whole. A short story, in contrast, can likened to a single pearl— tiny but whole, perfectly symmetrical, gleaming smooth, reflecting the light. You can roll the best short stories around in your palm, viewing them from different angles. Afterward, you remember the silky nacre, cool against your skin.

Like pearls, the best stories coalesce around a fragment of grit: a loss, a need, an unsatisfied dream. Imagination builds layers of emotion and sensation around the irritating core. The triggering fragment does not disappear, but the author transforms it into a thing of beauty as much as pain.

Mitzi Szereto’s collection Oysters and Pearls includes some tales that come close to perfect. I’ve been an admirer of Ms. Szereto’s work since my very first introduction to erotica. Hence quite a few of the stories collected here were familiar, but like pearls, they do not lose their luster in one or two readings.

I remember the first time I read “Odalisque”, in one of Ms. Szereto’s early erotic travel anthologies where I also had a story. I was astounded and deeply aroused. It had not lost any of its impact upon re-reading. The tale is a gorgeous evocation of desire for the Other, a sensual feast with a bittersweet aftertaste. A western woman in Dubai experiences an erotic idyll with her Arab lover, only to discover that it’s far easier to mingle bodies than it is cultures.

“Bakewell, Revisited” is another gem, a story of youthful desire reclaimed. The only lesbian tale in the collection, this vignette harnesses all five senses in service of eroticism. Once again there’s no happy ending, but the tale does not require one. The circling of past back to present is complete on its own.

“The Dracula Club” is another of my favorites. Like many of Ms. Szereto’s heroines, the Goth girl in this tale blithely follows her erotic destiny, without much concern for the world’s judgments. In this case, it leads her from Ohio to Romania, into a stone coffin and arms of two lovers who might or might not be undead.

“It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” was new to me. This bleakly comic tale is a black pearl. It’s not really erotic, though it’s about sex, but it’s so perfectly structured I felt like applauding at its conclusion.

“Hen Night” has some of the same cleverness, though it’s less dark. A woman decides to liven up her life with an anonymous sexual tryst in the loo. However, the encounter turns out to have unanticipated consequences.

Mitzi Szereto’s erotic visions tend to be tinged with blood and irony. “The Blood Moon Kiss” is an atmospheric vampire tale reminiscent of the Twilight series but infused with far more passion. “My Lover” presents a darkly poetic view of a relationship in which one lover completely consumes the other. “Hell is Where the Heart Is” offers Faustian tale of revenge in which the Devil is called “Alfie”. This rambling story lacks the structural precision of some of the stories in this collection, but shares their black humor.

“Loving on Kyoto Time” brings an uncharacteristic note of gentleness to the collection. There’s no sex in this tale, only graceful, wordless longing that’s mirrored in the beauties of the ancient Japanese city of the title.

I didn’t like every story in Oysters and Pearls. A few of them felt tossed off, raw chips of imagination rather than carefully polished gems. Ms. Szereto’s writing is always competent, but her best stories are literary jewels. Those tales, where the narrator’s voice lingers to echo in your mind, are the ones I most appreciate.

As a whole, Oysters and Pearls is a strong collection of short erotic fiction. The best stories in the volume are ones you’ll want to read and re-read, as much for their gorgeous craft as for their heat.

Review Tuesday: Writing Naked by Mike Kimera (#erotica #lust #literature)

Writing Naked by Mike Kimera

Samba Mountain Press, 2005

What is the essence of erotica? There are as many answers as there individuals - readers and writers. Erotica is writing that arouses the reader. Erotica is words to wank to. Erotica celebrates our sexual selves. Erotica is escapist, letting us experience vicariously the fantasies that we can't fulfill in real life. Erotica is political and subversive, writing that challenges the dominant cultural view of sex as something shameful, sinful, and evil. Erotica is personal and psychological, exploring the sexual sources of human conflict, motivation and emotion. Erotica is transformational, leading us to new visions of our sexual selves.

Mike Kimera has stopped writing and publishing under that name. In the days when I knew him, though, he used to wonder in his blog postings whether what he wrote should be called "erotica". Based on the sampling of stories in his stunning collection, Writing Naked, I don't think there is any doubt. Mike writes graphic, honest, revealing, and sometimes painful tales about believable and mostly sympathetic humans in the grip of sexual desire. Writing Naked is bold and arousing. At the same time, it delves deeper and exposes more of the psychological realities of sex than most erotic writing.

The slim volume hangs between the poles of two multi-part stories: "Writing Naked: Letters to Myself" (the highly deserving winner of the 2005 Rauxa Prize for erotic writing) and "American Holidays". The former is the intricate self-dissection of an acknowledged porn addict and sexual adventurer. The latter follows a set of interlinked characters through a set of emotional and sexual crises that coincide, as crises so often do, with holidays: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and so on. Each is a tour de force of erotic writing. Reading about blindfolded Peter being used by his dominant wife and her much-desired best friend is an incredible turn-on. However, there's more here than that. The characters feel extraordinarily real. They are ordinary people except perhaps for being more sexually voracious than average. They are confused and guilty and consistently, overwhelmed by lust.

If there's one theme that unites the stories in Writing Naked, it is the concept that intense sexual desire is somehow foreign, inscrutable, uncontrollable, and irresistible once it is given free reign. Kimera's characters do things they know they will regret later, burning as they do in the superheated furnace of lust. In the brief but totally arresting "Happy Hour", a character muses:

"I wonder how many other women have sweated and moaned their way to slick release upon the tightly woven beauty of this rug? In the beginning I thought it a magic carpet, carrying me to

new heights; I rode it while Gerald rode me. Now I realise that both Gerald and I have been abducted by some poltergeist of lust. We are now so high we can find no way to reach the ground."

And then later:

"This thing we have, whatever it is, is not friendship, or love. It doesn't make us stronger or better. It consumes us. We are burning in each other's arms.

"I hope that when the fire goes out we will not be hollow."

It's not that Kimera's creatures don't know love. They do. When they are lucky, as in the opening story, "I Want to Watch You Do It", the romantic short "Kneading", or the slyly seductive BDSM tale, "Other Bonds Than Leather", their emotional attachment coincides with the object of their lust. All too often, though, their hearts and their genitalia are headed in totally different directions.

"I felt like an alcoholic who everyone thinks is sober; the fact that he isn't drinking doesn't mean he's sober, it just means that he's managed not to be drunk today. Every day that I refused to listen to the wilder side of my nature was a victory, but I didn't expect to keep on winning forever."

("Happy Anniversary")

It may sound as though Kimera's stories are dark, and many of them are. I couldn't read the two hundred pages of this book in a single session; the emotional impact was just too overwhelming. However, there are gems of raunchy humor in this collection, most notably the tongue-in-cheek "Friday Night at the Adult Bookstore", the delicious fantasy tale "Go Large", and the truly inspired "Mating Calls":

"I made the mistake of phoning Kyle, my most recent ex, to ask him if I was a noisy fuck. Cue one fucked up conversation.

"'Babe,' he said (I hate being called babe and he knows it), 'when we fucked, I only knew you were awake because you made no noise. As soon as you fell asleep, you'd start snoring.'

"'Oh, yeah?' I replied (okay, so I'm not always calm on the phone). 'Well, the only reason I knew I was awake when we fucked was because sex was always fun in my dreams.'"

("Mating Calls")

There are also a few stories of sweet redemption through the flesh. "Newton's Laws of Emotion" traces the emotional tectonics that bring a woman scientist to the point of introducing her artist husband and her physicist lover. "Eve's Freedom" is a simple tale about the healing power of love, even when unrequited. And the lyrical "Tiger Tiger" reaffirms that even when we don't will or comprehend it, there may be something transcendental about sexual union.

There's a trend in erotic writing these days toward the edgy and extreme: violent, shocking, completely transgressive. You might wonder if Mike Kimera's stories fall into this category. In fact, they do not. Mike's characters often behave badly. They fuck roughly, deceive freely, break taboos left and right. However, they never lose their humanity. Somehow there's always a spark of empathy—even for the ugly millionaire who gets his kicks by paying women to be degraded in "Fucking Money".

Mike pretends to distance himself from his characters, to survey their actions and unflinchingly report their foibles. His bio notes that he took a degree in psychology "out of sheer self-indulgence". He likes to assume the pose of the analytical observer, the chronicler of lust. It's just a pose, though. He cares about his characters far too much to be a clinician.

If you're looking for light entertainment, no thought or emotion required, then skip this book. On the other hand, if you're ready to experience desire in all its complexity and intensity, don't miss it.

Review Tuesday Moved to Thursday: Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman (#review #glbt)

Maybe I should simply move my reviews permanently to Thursday. They seem to get displaced almost every week! But "Review Thursday" just doesn't sound as good. 

Speaking of reviews, have you seen the latest incredible review of Raw Silk at Wicked Reads?  Check it out! Then hop over to buy the book. It's still at a reduced price ($2.99) though not as cheap as it was last week.

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007

ISBN 978-0-37429921-7

Erotica is the literature of desire, both unrequited and consummated. This might be a critical distinction between erotica and pornography (if one were motivated to define such a distinction): in pornography, desire is rarely unconsummated for long. By contrast, in Andre Aciman's novel Call Me By Your Name, teenaged Elio suffers in the throes of unspoken, unbearable and unsatisfied desire for the entire first half of the book. The resulting erotic tension is so acute that the reader practically cries tears of relief when Elio and the object of his longing come together at last.

Every year Elio's family spends the summer at their idyllic villa on the Italian Riviera. Every summer, they invite some promising young scholar to join them in this sun-splashed sabbatical; in return for assisting Elio's father, a well-known professor, with his correspondence and research, the guest has six weeks to enjoy the myrtle-scented air and the gentle sea, dinner conversations on philosophy and literature, the moonlit, musical nights, the lazy and sensuous Mediterranean days.

Oliver arrives, blue shirt billowing, breezy and informal, brilliant and moody, and Elio is entranced, even obsessed, by the slightly older man. The attraction is simultaneously physical and spiritual. Elio is as captivated by Oliver's intellect and charm as he is by the man's lanky body. But Elio is shy beyond belief, introspective, unsure, knowing in some sense what he wants but entirely incapable of asking for it. All he can do is watch Oliver, and ache:

Maybe it started soon after his arrival during one of those grinding lunches when he sat next to me and it finally dawned on me that, despite a light tan acquired during his brief stay in Sicily earlier that summer, the color on the palms of his hands was the same as the pale, soft skin of his soles, of his throat, of the bottom of his forearms, which hadn't really been exposed to much sun. Almost a light pink, as glistening and smooth as the underside of a lizard's belly. Private, chaste, unfledged, like a blush on an athlete's face or an instance of dawn on a stormy night. It told me things about him that I never knew to ask.

The physical is a cipher that, unlocked, reveals the truths of the soul. Elio wants to possess Oliver entirely, to become one with him. However, he's a teenager, and hopelessly awkward. One still summer afternoon, he sneaks into Oliver's room (actually his own room, relinquished to the honored guest for the season) and finds Oliver's bathing suit in the closet:

I picked it up, never in my life having pried into anyone's personal belongings before. I brought the bathing suit to my face, then rubbed my face inside of it, as if I were trying...to lose myself in its folds. So this is what he smells like when his body isn't covered by suntan lotion, this is what he smells like, this is what he smells like... On impulse I removed my bathing suit and began to put his on. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted it with the kind of intoxicated rapture that makes people take risks they would never take even with plenty of alcohol in their system. I wanted to come in his suit, and leave the evidence for him to find there.

Elio suffers terribly from his desire, and we suffer with him. Finally, he manages to speak, to tell Oliver the truth, only to discover that Oliver desires him equally. Their first coupling is confused and somewhat traumatic for the teen, but soon their relationship evolves into an intimacy so complete that it's not clear where one person ends and the next begins.

Their joy in each other reaches a climax at summer's end, when Elio accompanies Oliver to Rome for a two-day holiday, before Oliver returns to America. Every moment is perfect, incandescent, lit by the knowledge that these days may be their last together.

Leaning out into the evening air, I knew that this might never be given to us again, and yet I couldn't bring myself to believe it. He too must have had the same thought as we surveyed the magnificent cityscape, smoking and eating fresh figs, shoulder to shoulder, each wanting to do something to mark the moment, which is why, yielding to an impulse that couldn't have felt more natural at the time, I let my left hand rub his buttocks and then began to stick my middle finger into him as he replied, "You keep doing this, and there's definitely no party." I told him to do me a favor and keep staring out the window but to lean forward a bit, until I had a brainstorm once my entire finger was inside of him: we might start but under no condition would we finish. Then we'd shower and go out and feel like two exposed, live wires giving off sparks each time they so much as flicked each other.

Still, at the end of the dizzying, ecstatic sojourn in Rome, Oliver leaves, Elio returns to the villa, and the distance between them begins to grow. Even perfect connections are finite in time. The pain of lost love mirrors the agony of unfulfilled desire.

Call Me By Your Name is a mainstream novel by a respected professor of comparative literature. However, it is as raw and as tender as any erotic romance. I am amazed and perhaps a bit annoyed that a book this graphic and intense, especially one with a homorerotic theme, featuring a protagonist who might well not yet be eighteen, can be published freely and reviewed by the New York Times, while self-styled "erotic fiction" is censored, hidden away, or ignored. On the other hand, I suppose that I should be grateful that it is still possible for a book so centered in desire to be taken seriously.

This is a beautiful, and beautifully written book. It will wring your heart and stir your senses. I don't know whether the author would agree, but as readers of erotica, I submit that we should claim this book as our own.