An enjoyable foray into erotic, female-centric literature, with enough nuance and structure to serve as decent sci-fi.
In a largely oceanic world where men are scarce and paternity is often kept secret, Daisy and her partner, Sappho, run an agency that helps men and women conceive.
Opening with an artificial insemination sequence that is as erotic as it is fast-paced, Newell dexterously sketches her sci-fi world—a matrilineal, archipelago-laden planet that is not Earth but Earth-like. Sappho runs a conception agency with her busty, bisexual partner, Daisy. They welcome a woman who wants to arrange an anonymous coupling for her niece Morning. Sappho must arrange the coupling so Morning and the man can have sex without knowing each other’s identities. Both occupy prominent positions within their clans, however, and it would cause a scandal if news of their coupling were leaked. After consulting with a lawyer, Sappho and Daisy take the case and begin to train Morning, a lovely but seemingly virginal young woman, in the art of sensuality, using her body as well as accessories. When Sappho and Daisy prepare her to meet her male partner, the actual act—which involves a system of oceanic tides and brain programming—gives them pause. Will their actions help or harm those around them? The book, refreshingly sex-positive and fast-paced, is eminently readable erotica within a sleek sci-fi framework. Plot details—such as the constant fear of winding up in the “scandal sheets” and casual greetings that revolve around tidal patterns—make the world feel believable. And Daisy’s and Sappho’s obvious joy in sex and sexuality gives the erotic scenes a lush charge. What’s notable is that each sex scene, much as in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, isn’t just an excuse for coupling; the acts help to advance the plot.
An enjoyable foray into erotic, female-centric literature, with enough nuance and structure to serve as decent sci-fi.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942528-01-2
Page Count: 202
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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