A Prostitute, A Highwayman and A Pirate Walks into a Bar...

I have officially become a convert to the fandom of Erica Jong. Before I brought "Fear of Flying" with me no holiday and realised that Jong is a genius, I was terribly prejudiced and sure that she was one of those horribly 1970's shouting feminist, burning bras and condemning the use of mascara. How very wrong I was, this is one cool woman! I love her books and currently, I'm working my way through her many great novels.

On the menu this weekend was "Fanny", a novel that sounds like it was a bit of project for Jong. This is not just any old novel, it is a novel published in the 1980s but written 18th century style yet with a very modern heroine.

Fanny Hackabout-Jones is a fierce young woman who has to go through an awful lot at a terribly young age.
Orphaned at birth, she was left in the care of Lord and Lady Bellars at Lymeworth and grew up as a child of the household. The rakish Lord Bellars is never at home, preferring the parties and women of London but when he returns to Lymeworth after a two-year long absence, he falls violently in lust with the beautiful 17-year old Fanny. All red hair, white skin and large bosom, the beauty is both Fanny's best asset but also her downfall. Raped by her stepfather, she flees Lymeworth to seek her fortune in London, hoping to make it as a female bard, a writer. Quite a dream for a girl of her age and her time and as in all good fairytales, she has to go through an awful lot of ... well ... awful stuff before she can fulfill her destiny.
On her way to London she takes part in a witches' ritual, loses a close friend and is robbed by highwaymen who abduct her. 
Eventually she makes it to London where she has to make a living in the oldest way possible... From there her adventures become more and more daring and dangerous and along the way she meets secret societies, sadistic sea captains and honourable pirates. 

This is a romp through another time. Full of rump. Like a Georgette Heyer with more sex and more drama. The plot is not believable at all but that's the point - it's not about the plot, it's about the spirit. And if there's something that Fanny is full of, it's spirit. She's a feisty young lady with plenty of courage and her story is well worth a read. 

Read it if: You like your women like you like your chili pepper: redheaded, fiery and full of power. 

The Japanese Godmother of the Fifty Shades Segment

Though "Snakes and Earrings" by Hitomi Kanehara is a short book, very short really, it is one that leaves an impression. The first time I read it was a few years ago. I was on my way out to shop for dinner just as it started raining, so I decided to read for a few minutes to see if it would clear and picked up "Snakes and Earrings" and started on it. It did clear up relatively fast but by then I was deep in reading and I didn't stop reading until I had read the last page. Dinner was delayed by almost two hours.

It is a forceful book and though I rarely say this about any book, this one is not for the fainthearted or for the young. Though it was written by Hitomi Kanehara when she was only 21, I would not recommend it to anyone below the age of 18 as it contains some really explicit scenes of sex and violence.

Lui is a young Japanese woman who is emotionally fragile and depressed. Her boyfriend Ama is an emo, goth type who loves piercings and body modifications and while living with him, Lui starts shedding her pop girl image and exploring the darker fashions, eventually deciding that she wants to split her tongue. To do so she first needs to have her tongue pierced and then gradually make the hole larger and larger. Ama takes her to a friend of his who is specialised in tattoos and piercings and from the very first second there is a fierce sexual chemistry between the piercer and Lui. It is a not a healthy love-at-first sight we are talking about here but a dark, sadomasochistic sexual current. One where there is only a short distance between pleasure and pain, between living and dying.

Kanehara takes her protagonist to the very darkest of places, the deepest despair and a pain that is difficult to handle. It is a beautifully written story. Every word is just right. It is no surprise that it won several awards and has already been made into a film. Don't cheat yourself of this read though you might be repulsed by some of the topics or the actions of the characters - it will stay with you for a long time as it did with me.

Read it if: You want a painful but authentic story that will pierce you with its words. You want a book that deals with sex in a very different way to the 50 Shades type books.

Laced With Romance and Clichés

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Fear of Flying, Fondness of F......

Did my headline seem like a bit much? If so, I'm sorry. Well, not really. If I'm being totally honest, it sums up "Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong rather nicely, I think.


This is not the kind of sex that you find in "50 Shades of Whatever" and its counter-parts. It's dirty, yes, but mostly because the people taking part in the sexual acts haven't had a shower in days... The sex in "Fear of Flying" is more real, not stylized in any way and way cooler than a lot of the drivel in the market at the moment. 


Isadora Wing is a 29-year old divorced and remarried author. Having married and divorced her clinically insane college boyfriend, she is now married to psychoanalyst Bennett and together they are attending a psychoanalysts' conference in Vienna. What better setting for a comedic drama than a room full of psychoanalysts all peddling their individual interpretation of Freud and Jung? While in Vienna, Isadora falls in lust with the psychoanalyst (yes there are a lot of them in this book, somewhere close to 120) Adrian Goodlove who appears to Isadora to be able to supply her with something that she has always wanted: the zipless fuck. As in an anonymous, non-commital, passionate roll in the hay. 
This is a love triangle unlike any I've come across in a novel before, especially as it is terribly short on love, and it causes Isadora to think back and consider her history with men in particular and with her own sense of self in general. 


As a main character, Isadora is interesting because she's bloody annoying. She is indecisive and does not know her own mind. She's frustrated with her sisters for looking down on her for not having children, yet condescends their life decisions. She is passive when she should be proactive, then stumbles mindlessly into trouble when she should be considering the best line of action. Yet somehow, she is also likeable, probably because she puts herself through an awful lot in the hope that things will end up right. Some will be appalled by what has been deemed her promiscuity but sex for Isadora is about more than the physical act, for her it seems to be a tool used to explore her own identify. She is on a journey of self-discovery and her fear of flying is not only literal but also a symbol of her fear of searching for herself and for her own identity instead of searching for a man whose identity she can mould herself on.   


It could all get a bit stuffy (especially as so many psychoanalysts are involved) but actually it is a really funny book, particularly the parts involved Isadora's sisters who really are quite a bunch. When it comes to dumb remarks and stupid decisions, they are up there with the Bennett sisters from "Pride and Prejudice". 


This is the thinking young woman's book. If you are a 18 to 20-year-old considering whether to spend your money on 50 Shades, please pick up "Fear of Flying" instead. It'll give you much more to think about and to consider, about yourself and your generation, about your mother's generation, about men and about sex.


Read it if: You're a woman between the ages of 18 and 60 with a sense of humour and an appetite for passion. 

Women in a Time of Change

A while back I read "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe and my review was pretty raving: I loved it! So when I heard that others who like "The Best of Everything", also liked Mary McCarthy's "The Group", there was no way around it. I had to have it. Last week, when my boyfriend and I went on vacation, I started reading "The Group" on the train to Gatwick airport and pretty much from the first page, I was hooked. 


"The Group" is a eight young women, all graduates of Vassar, who become close friends during their college years. The novel follows them as they leave their college days behind to pursue love, careers and plans for the future. As characters, they are very different and the focus of the novel shifts from one girl to the next so that we get to understand their individual stories one at a time while glimpsing the all of them in each others stories. It is a genius way to to tell the story of this group of girls and it kept me reading furiously, as I tried to understand how their lives interwove and how their actions impacted each other. 


What becomes very clear from the stories of these girls is, that they are living in time of change. World War I, the depression, the changing roles of women, of marriage, of sex. These are a generation of women who have to find their own way in life because the world has changed tremendously since their mothers were young. They are all keen to make a difference, to do something meaningful with their lives in a world where nothing is as it once was. As a historical novel, it works beautifully. 


For me, however, the history aspects were an advantage but not the main advantage. I found that one of the best things about "The Group" is that there are no clear goodies or baddies emerging from the stories, each of us readers will root for a different girl and who we root for might change. Personally, I found the bohemian "women who loves too much" Kay slightly exasperating and Priss made me want to shake some sense into her. However, I suspect that many others will see Kay as a hero because of her fierce pursuit of her ambition to "do good" in New York. 


My favourites changed a bit as I read but at the end of the book, I was found that three girls had made most impression on made and had come closest to my heart: 


Dottie for her robbed innocence and her steely character as she realizes that sometimes the happy ending will look different to what we imagined. 


Polly for her maturity and her insistence that what counts is that she is happy - not other peoples perception of her or her circumstances in life. 


And last but not least the beautiful and fascinating Lakey who is understood to live a charmed existence in glamorous Europe but who turns out to be the girl who may have most to fight for. 


Read it if: You like "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe, "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You wouldn't mind going back in time and visiting 1930s New York. 

Review: "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" by Florence King

One of the strongest American stereotypes most be the Southern Belle. If you have ever read "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell, you know exactly what I mean. It is a way of life, an identity oozing overpowering feminine charm and delicately wrapped female vile. It is the exact opposite as being one of the boys.


"Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" is Florence King's tale of growing up in a Southern family, ruled by the soft and well-manicured yet steely hand of her grandmother. Granny has aspirations to be a grand lady and she dreams of raising a Southern belle - however, her own daughter is more of a man than a woman really, loving baseball and suits, so when a granddaughter comes into the world, Granny does everything in her power to turn her into a real lady. Growing up in a bohemian household with Granny, mama and a book-loving Englishman for a father means that Florence has a childhood far away from the norm. From day one the three main adults in her life has three very different agendas and Florence has to find her own identity from a young age.


I read about "Confessions..." at one of the blogs I follow and loved the sound of it. I wasn't really sure what to expect but from the first line of the first page, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Florence King has a talent for observing the awkward and funny, the little humorous gems of an extraordinary life. Her observations on the American female of the 1950s are both disturbing and hilarious - I was appalled and fascinated at the fact that all of the other girls in her sorority at college took a marriage prep class. Homework involved washing their boyfriends socks!


To describe these girls who are forever worrying that no-one will marry them and depend on guys to give them self-esteem and self-worth, Florence and her father comes up with the word "malkin". A fantastic word that I will definitely keep in my vocabulary. Is is bound to come in handy.
Florence herself was far from a malkin - though she looked like the perfect young Southern lady, inside her there was a real academic mind hungering for books as well as a sexual creature hungering for, well, sex. The story follows her battles to study French (she ends up studying history instead) and to lose her virginity without falling pregnant. Quite rebellious pursuits in the South in the 1950s but Florence has courage and is not afraid to go after the things in life as she wants.


The book is written with intelligence and personality, it is full of anecdotes and scattered words of wisdom and it poses questions about femininity and the role of a woman that are as relevant as they were in the 1950s. Because what defines you as a lady? They way you look or sound? A ring on your finger or who you sleep with? It is probably a question that each of us have to answer for ourself just as Florence King did. And as she herself says in the book - she may have gone to bed with both men and women but she never ever smoked on the street.

Review: "Story of My Life" by Jay McInerney

A few months ago I read a collection of short stories by Jay McInerney, "How It Ended", and I absolutely loved the style and the subject matter so I decided to try one of his novels. One of the great things about McInerney (apart from his cool name) is the fact the he has been quite a prolific writer so there is lots to choose from! In the end I went with "Story of My Life" based on what little I could read about it on the back of it and it turned out to be a great and very captivating choice!

The narrator is one very difficult young lady. Alison is a 20-year-old girl who makes Lindsay Lohan look like a saint by comparison. Living in New York, she fancies herself a bit of an actress but in reality she spends most of her time drunk or high or having sex or all three things more or less at the same time. She is a rich daddy's girl - only daddy has run off with a bimbo - and she is a train wreck. Her room mate Jeannie is a little bit better but the rest of Alison's friends, not to mention her sister, are just as bad as Alison and together they seem to finance a large part of the bars and clubs in 1980's New York.

When it comes to guys, Alison is blasé. She doesn't fall in love, she falls in lust and she has random sex. That is the range of her emotional commitment. When she falls in lust with (or is it love?) bond trader and Shakespeare lover Dean, she takes him with him on her ride through the excesses of New York where it is no surprise to her to enter a room where she has slept with all males present. Alison is the kind of girl that makes you want to send your daughters to convent school or move far far into the countryside. At twenty she has gotten herself into so much trouble that as a reader, I found it hard to imagine how she would ever survive to 25. We - the reader - never find out if she does, but following her in her quest for self-destruction up to her 21st birthday is fascinating. And in the end there is a twist that makes everything fall into place.

According to that trusted source Wikipedia, Alison Poole is based on a real woman whom McInerney dated and the fictional character Alision Poole appears in works by Bret Easton Ellis. Intriguing.

I loved this book. It is fast-paced and it forces you to focus on difficult questions and topics that are really important today. The extravagance and excess, the lack of parents. This girl could probably be one of the it-girls depicted in glossy magazines... The story is incredibly well-written and oh so funny. Hilarious. Alison is absolutely thick with little self-awareness and following her exploits is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you like a good laugh and a bit of drama, you should be okay.

Read it if: You like a book to both touch you and make you laugh. If you find yourself strangely attracted to stories about Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and similar "graceful" young ladies...

Review: "The Pregnant Widow"

There were so many reasons to pick up "The Pregnant Widow" by Martin Amis. First of all, I really like "London Fields" by Martin Amis and I quite enjoyed "The Rachel Papers" so it seemed like a reasonable assumption that I would enjoy "The Pregnant Widow" as well. Also I think the title is really cool - the paperback cover on the other hand I am not too keen on but hey, you can't get it all and I chose the hardback cover to accompany this review as I think that is quite pretty.

"The Pregnant Widow" is Amis's 12th novel and in my opinion it is a really great one. The story is quite interesting and multi-facetted with lots of details that kept me fascinated and with beautiful descriptions that made Italy - where the story is set - really come to life.

The narrator is a 20-year-old male with all the trouble and issues that come with being way too focussed on sex and at the mercy of women... Poor guy! Keith Nearing is quite the anti-hero, he is a days away from his 21st birthday and far away from home on a holiday in Italy. It is the 1970's and girls are intent on behaving like boys and being liberated which means that Keith's relationship with girlfriend Lily is not going to well, she is too liberated and to little in love with Keith, who sees her as some sort of sister. Instead he has his eyes on her friend, the gorgeous upper-class girl Sheherazade with the amazing body who is starting to understand exactly how much power she has over the male gender. As if that wasn't enough to cook up a dramatic story, Amis then throws a bunch of interesting minor characters into the mix - such as every-girls-dream the Italian count (with only with drawback that keeps him from ever getting Sheherazade) and the depressed twentysomething who is hiding out in shame. It is a dangerous mix and Keith is too messed up by a mix of his own hormones, feelings and dreams to take caution. He spends his days in a frenzy of reading - only disrupted to have conversations with the girls or looking at their breasts.... It is a summer that he will always remember and that will change his life forever.

It is a fantastic book if you ask me - I read it and loved it and some day I will read this in Italy on a warm summers day and it will feel like I am almost there with Keith as he faces the difficulties of youth and the conundrums of women.

Read it if: You love early Martin Amis - or if you are no longer a teenager but remember how difficult being hormonal was...