LIFE IN THE WORLD OF WOMEN
by Maxim Jakubowski
London bookseller/anthologist Jakubowski (the New Crimes series, etc.) has come up with an early contender for the most hilariously inappropriate title of the year. Life in the World of Women's Bodies would be a better heading for this collection of nine erotic (and largely sadistic) fantasies in which males provide the agency and women the geography. The longest of them, ``A Map of the Pain,'' is a typically uncompromising sexual odyssey whose heroine endures all manner of transatlantic degradation, acting out dozens of male-oriented scenarios (designer lingerie, stripping, masturbation, same-sex, beating, piercing, branding) for reasons best known to her. In among much broadly autobiographical fantasy, there's also an X-rated parody of 84 Charing Cross Road, some thin wedges of metafiction, and (the for once accurately titled) ``Kate's Cunt.'' More a spiky pillow book than a crime collection, but the hints of J.G. Ballard and James M. Cain provide virtually the only narrative impetus at all.