THE BEST AMERICAN EROTICA 2001

Name: THE BEST AMERICAN EROTICA 2001
Author: Susie Bright
ISBN: 0-684-86914-4

edited by Susie Bright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2001

As with a photo album whose every picture dissatisfies some member of the family, every user returning to this volume after...

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The eighth in Bright’s series of hit-or-miss pillow books has a little something for everybody, but not much of anything for anybody.

Noting in her Introduction how far the genre has come since her 1993 inaugural volume, which could have been titled The Only American Erotica, the editor cites the explosion of erotic fiction on the Web—a phenomenon that makes contemporary erotica “the fastest-growing fiction genre ever seen.” Given the endless fields she’s gleaning, however, the 22 stories chosen as the most “arousing yet literary” of their kind are a disappointing lot. It’s not just that the sort of literary values you might associate with the O. Henry Prize winners are in short supply, or that the most obviously literary stories (with the happy exception of Charles Flowers’s sharp, funny boxing memoir) aren’t very successful as either lubricant or lit. What turns some readers on (Todd Belton’s prodigiously expanding breasts, Cara Bruce’s exotic dancer seduced by a female client, Dodie Bellamy’s adventures of a woman who really is from Venus, James Williams’s paean to “Jason’s Cock”) will send others looking for greener pastures. As in earlier volumes, the leading principle of selection here, pace Bright, isn’t “sincerity” but variety; Bright seems determined to leave no sexual preference or practice unrepresented, and the result reads less like The New Yorker than like National Geographic. There’s masturbation (Matt Bernstein Sycamore), serial sex (Damian Grace), sex before waking (Hanne Blank), sex professionals (Nathan Englander, Wendy Becker, M.J. Rose), hopeful young love (Dani Shapiro), remembered old love (Jack Murnighan), and the usual generous helping of gay, lesbian, and interracial couples and multiples.

As with a photo album whose every picture dissatisfies some member of the family, every user returning to this volume after the initial survey can expect to reread one or two stories devotionally and ignore the rest.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-684-86914-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SANTA CRUZ NOIR
edited by Susie Bright

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BIG SEX, LITTLE DEATH
by Susie Bright

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THE BEST OF BEST AMERICAN EROTICA, 2008
edited by Susie Bright

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.