Posts Tagged ‘bds&m’
Beyond all limits?
Posted on: February 25, 2012
- In: Hot Stuff
- 2 Comments
Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair by Elizabeth McNeill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have to give this book 5 stars because I enjoyed it and, while I was reading it, I became very interested in the life of the author.
But, to be honest, I spent more time trying to find out something about the author than I did actually reading the book. It’s a very short book. I like the flow of the sentences. They are colloquial and simple but very smooth, which is the sign, I think, of a very experienced writer.
I didn’t find out very much about Elizabeth McNeill for all the time I spent researching her. I gathered that at the time of writing this novel she was working as an executive for a New York Publishing company, that the book was probably inspired by a real relationship and that she probably shopped at Bloomingdale’s.
I didn’t find the sex in this book arousing but I enjoyed the descriptions of clothes and of the insides of bedrooms and wardrobes.
What I liked most, though, was the cool, thoughtful analysis of why she enjoyed pain during sex, how it contributed to her sensual pleasure and why it intensified her orgasms.
The story moves between present and past tense very skilfully and there is a poignancy throughout that culminates quite beautifully.
At the end of the story she references a “porn flick” called Beyond all limits and she talks about having gone beyond her limits.
I found this interesting because of my own erotic memoir called Love has no limits. Elizabeth McNeill has a different perspective from me. She ends on a note of pessimism: “I wonder whether my body will ever again register above luke-warm.”
My own book ends on a note of naive yearning: “… love has no limits if it deserves the name of love.”
Perhaps that’s why, although I enjoyed this book intellectually, emotionally it left me cold.
Vintage Paranormal BDSM
Posted on: September 7, 2011
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An) by Robert Hans van Gulik
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
At the heart of this book is a story that involves a lot of bondage, torture, beating, sexual passion, near-nudity and paranormal phenomena.
Yes, as with so many things, the Chinese did paranormal BDSM centuries before the current craze sweeping America.
But, ironically, in this book the paranormal element is somewhat muted, which is the main reason Robert van Gulik thought it might be presentable in translation to Western readers.
I try to learn something practical from every book I read. The thing I learnt from this one is that it’s very hard to translate the Chinese word “neiyi” (undergarment), because it’s very unspecific even in Chinese.
When the suspect is stripped of all her clothes and left in only an “undergarment”, which happens on at least two separate occasions, I really want to know more. Which undergarment? Is it like a shift or is it only a pair of panties? Is it skimpy or conservative? Can you see through it?
Most readers would not want to picture the poor wretch strapped nearly naked to a mechanical device so that she can be beaten and racked. But I’m an erotic novelist. My interest is professional and dispassionate.
The end of the novel, which deals with the executions of all the wrongdoers, is much more explicit. But it’s a case of too little too late. Because of the earlier omissions, I’m afraid the text only gets 3 stars from me.
Is this a love story?
Posted on: July 15, 2011
Kelly and Victor by Niall Griffiths
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m not sure if this is hardcore trashy BDSM masquerading as literary fiction or literary fiction masquerading as hardcore trashy BDSM.
I like the way Niall Griffiths writes but I think I preferred him in Sheepshagger. I found the violence in Kelly and Victor a bit hard to understand.
By the way, Sheepshagger, is not pornographic at all. And nor is Stump. In case you were wondering.
But Kelly and Victor quite possibly is. I don’t know. It’s not my kind of porn so I can’t tell.
