SEX AFTER SEVENTY

A debut manual rejects the idea that the elderly can’t have active and exciting sex lives.

Grant’s perceptive guide puts a strong focus on senior men—who can no longer rely on the energy of youth or even reliable erections to sustain their passion for sexual activity—and post-menopausal women, shrugging off the idea that with age must come celibacy. More of a self-help and instructional resource than a scholarly one, the book nonetheless provides extensive background for many of its conclusions, looking at the history of the sexual revolution, the proliferation of blunt advice and pornography on the internet, the chemical responses humans share with animals, and the physical reactions the human body has to stimulation. Information on the work’s 16 types of orgasms and ways to reach them are included as well. In addition, the author provides techniques that range from the romantic to the clinical in discovering how to stimulate a partner or oneself, emphasizing the normalcy of such practices while answering age-old questions like “Does size matter?” and examining the “vital skill” of female ejaculation. Not purely physical in its interests, the book also seeks to inform monogamous couples on how to keep tensions and conflicts low in their relationships while encouraging a self-study of inhibitions and their origins. Much as it encourages readers to do so, the guide likes to tease the audience, offering bits of advice only to follow up with more detailed instructions later. This repetition is explicitly intended to help with retention but will likely be discouraging to readers who wish to easily revisit specific tips. While the manual supplies a short bibliography, stronger in-text citations would have helped to separate the anecdotal from the factual, and photographs or illustrations might have better conveyed certain techniques. But the guide’s commitment to ending the stigma of conversations about sex, particularly among seniors, active or not (there’s even a brief chapter on performing with physical limitations), remains admirable and effective in its straightforward ardor.

Candid instruction and enthusiasm buck any notion that readers are ever too old for satisfying sex.