Though Bright can’t decide whether she’s broadening, legitimizing, or kidding erotic fiction, and her indecision sometimes...
If the tenth anniversary edition of Bright’s sturdy annual isn’t all things to all men, women, and warm-blooded animals, it’s not for lack of trying.
Now that the indefatigable impresario (Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression, 1999, etc.) has left behind the focus on fetishism and identity politics that made several of her earlier collections seem pat and mechanical, the 23 new stories here are less wide-ranging but more heartfelt and emotionally appealing even for readers who may not be gay, lesbian, transgendered, or sadomasochistic themselves. If Lisa Wolfe’s “How to Make a Cake” is nothing more than a deliciously straightforward paean to X-rated baking, Susan St. Aubin’s “The Man in the Gray Flannel Tights” rings some unexpected changes on crossdressing; Tsaurah Litzky’s “End of the World Sex” lives up to its label; even Martha Miller’s fleet “The Baby-Sitter” takes off from the time-honored fantasy suggested by its title to plumb the erotics of spousal jealousy. Meanwhile, Susan Volchok’s deadpan “How We Did It” amusingly sends up the Insert-Tab-A tone of some of the selections from bygone years. The most interesting features of the volume are the ones that offer evidence of the series’ growing pains: the obligatory inclusion of mainstream authors like Chuck Palahniuk, Dagoberto Gilb, and Susanna Kaysen; extensive excerpts from Bright’s interviews with the authors of all the first ten annuals (“Q: Do you have any collections we should know about?” A: Accordians”); the results of a readers’ poll that identified the 100 favorite stories from earlier volumes; and the reprinting of the top five vote-getters, which are all, in their very different ways, hot stuff indeed.
Though Bright can’t decide whether she’s broadening, legitimizing, or kidding erotic fiction, and her indecision sometimes seems awkward, the escape from pigeonholing it may be the best indication of the genre’s health, and that of its legion of readers.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-2261-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
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
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
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