Sex books are often avoided, and for good reason. To avoid the porn charge, they get too cerebral; to attract a sizable...
In the introduction to this story collection first printed on the Web site nerve.com, Murnighan offers a simple definition of sex: “One body bumping against another.” Out of this simplicity, he and co-editor Field compile a rarity: a sexy book about sex.
There are a number of ways to enjoy these 40 short pieces—sociological, psychological, physiological, and in its best entries, all three intertwine. Rachel Sherman’s “Over Chinese” features a father who will, Ilise Benun’s “Complex Electra” features a father who won’t. In Dani Shapiro’s “Bed of Leaves,” the older man is 28. In Susan Neville’s “Terrarium,” he’s 40-something. Stacey Richter’s “When to Use” explores what douching can and cannot do. Dennis Cooper’s epistolary “The Finish Line” shows what letters can and cannot do. None of the stories flinches from sex—the actual bumping together of bodies. But the physiology is always located in a psychosociological continuum. In Elizabeth Wurtzel’s “Alex,” the pleasurably painful intercourse a rock-music critic enjoys with a well-endowed, aspiring heavy-metal star, leads to something of an epiphany: “It’s not because it feels good. It’s just because it feels at all.” In Karen Bender’s “Robbery,” an elderly couple reclaim their house through a protracted, room-to-room act of lovemaking, after permanently relocating their retarded daughter. Henry Wren’s “Intimacy” concerns a Washington, D.C., limo driver who videotapes young couples having sex in the back seat on their prom nights while he circles the Iwo Jima war memorial, inscribed, we learn, with his dead older brother’s name. Some of the stories misfire: Jerry Stahl’s “Perv” is one-dimensional; Mary Gaitskill ambitious, essayistic “Folk Song, 1999” is stillborn. Meanwhile, many little-known voices grace this collection. There are also some big names: Jay McInerny, Robert Olen Butler, A.M. Homes.
Sex books are often avoided, and for good reason. To avoid the porn charge, they get too cerebral; to attract a sizable audience, they get too one-dimensional. Full Frontal Fiction avoids those errors. Like a good date, it’s both smart and sexy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-80658-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
