Archive for the 'DNF Reflection' category

DNF Reflection: Love Ahead, by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban

Jan 05 2012 Published by under 8 Nights of Ham/mukah, DNF Reflection

Love Ahead is two m/m romance novellas published in 2008 by Dreamspinner Press. Here’s the blurb for the first one, Under Contract:

The last thing Nick Cooper expects is for his boss, construction site foreman Ted Lucas, to insanely declare his love right after he finds out Cooper has asked to be transferred. Intrigued, Cooper offers him one night, figuring the “love” will burn out after sex, but it goes far better than either expect. Lucas’s chance comes when an accident leaves Cooper stuck and hurting at home. Lucas does his best to take care of him while hoping Cooper will fall in love with him in return, and Cooper discovers the idea of having Lucas in his life isn’t that crazy after all.

This novella — and this writing team in general — is very popular with m/m readers, so my view is an outlier, but I found the writing style to be wooden and artificial (how’s that for a combo?), and found the dialogue and characterization at times ridiculous.

I liked the premise of a foreman feeling unrequited adoration for an employee who is a near stranger, and blurting out a declaration of love on the first night they actually talk to each other outside of work. The set up of one partner exchanging idolization and lust for real love, and another partner coming to believe in the change, is interesting and, in my (limited) m/m reading, unique.

However, the characters never popped for me, and the lovesick Lucas, in particular, came across as implausibly naive and dull. I’ll explain below a few things that jarred me out of the novella:

I have never in my life heard a man refer to his nipples, especially not to a near stranger, but Cooper says,

“If it gets much colder in this damn trailer my nipples are going to cut through my damn shirt”

to his taciturn boss, while, it must be noted, he is INSIDE. Take away the “damns”, and put this in the third person, and you might be reading about a heroine’s chest in a Harlequin Presents.

I’ve often heard m/m accused of being m/f in disguise, and I have to say that the this whole novella, and the character of Lucas in particular, was very feminized. What man thinks, “Who’d want to love him, a big boorish construction worker?” First, does anyone think of themselves as “boorish”? And why on earth would someone think he is out of romantic contention because he is a construction worker? In general, I hate it when a character believes his career puts him out of the romantic running. It is so often a cheat to create conflict. This happens a lot when he is a cop, detective, or in the military. In those cases, at least you have danger or long absences. But what is it about being a construction worker (and he’s a foreman anyway) that makes someone unlovable? The story doesn’t even take a stab at an answer.

Redundancies in the writing did not add to drama or intensity:

“the foreman’s eyes widened as Cooper looked right at him. Directly.”

The authors resorted to repetitive body movements to convey emotion. For example, someone’s eyes or mouth was always going “wide” (there are ten pages of “wides” according to my Kindle). And then there are lines like this:

“The jeans were being pulled down his admittedly long legs.”

Putting aside the “invisible hand” aspect, admittedly, I have no idea why “admittedly” is in that sentence.

Here’s another passage the exemplifies the wooden writing and the characterization:

Lucas’s eyes got wide. That was Cooper’s tongue. Cooper’s tongue licking Cooper’s lips. He gawked for a long moment before shaking himself. … Christ, he hoped he didn’t do something to really piss Cooper off. It would totally suck if he left and quit. Christ. Don’t think about anything sucking…”

Is this a grown man, or a twelve year old? Here’s another line that stopped me in my reading tracks:

“‘I bet you want me on my knees, don’t you?’ he growled impishly.”

I had some fun trying to make an impish growl in the bathroom mirror. I confess, though, that I was unable to do it.

And another:

Without a word, he headed for the bathroom to dispose of the condom and retrieve a towel for them both. It wasn’t exactly a romantic gesture, but he figured it would be more appreciated than a rose or something.

Adding “or something”, “damns”, and whatever else does not turn such thoughts into believable ones. I have read and enjoyed some m/m romances in which one partner is very open, nurturing, and in touch with his emotions (I’m thinking of some K. A Mitchell, some JF Smith, etc.), so I don’t think my problem is that Lucas (and Cooper at times) has feminine qualities, but rather, that his characterization is so implausible.

I’m no great literary critic, to put it mildly. I read for character and story, and if those are compelling, I can forgive most anything. It takes a lot for the writing to make me put down a novella halfway through, but in this case, I just had to do it.

4 responses so far

When a DNF doesn’t mean “this book sucks”: Juliet Dark’s The Demon Lover

Dec 04 2011 Published by under DNF Reflection

This just screams "college prof in upstate New York" doesn't it?

 

I requested The Demon Lover from Random House/Ballantine via Net Galley back in August. It comes out December 27.

Here’s the blurb:

I gasped, or tried to. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t draw breath. His lips, pearly wet, parted and he blew into my mouth. My lungs expanded beneath his weight. When I exhaled he sucked my breath in and his weight turned from cold marble into warm living flesh.

Since accepting a teaching position at remote Fairwick College in upstate New York, Callie McFay has experienced the same disturbingly erotic dream every night: A mist enters her bedroom, then takes the shape of a virile, seductive stranger who proceeds to ravish her in the most toe-curling, wholly satisfying ways possible. Perhaps these dreams are the result of her having written the bestselling book The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers. Callie’s lifelong passion is the intersection of lurid fairy tales and Gothic literature—which is why she’s found herself at Fairwick’s renowned folklore department, living in a once-stately Victorian house that, at first sight, seemed to call her name.

But Callie soon realizes that her dreams are alarmingly real. She has a demon lover—an incubus—and he will seduce her, pleasure her, and eventually suck the very life from her. Then Callie makes another startling discovery: Her incubus is not the only mythical creature in Fairwick. As the tenured witches of the college and the resident fairies in the surrounding woods prepare to cast out the demon, Callie must accomplish something infinitely more difficult—banishing this supernatural lover from her heart.

The cover strongly evokes “YA Paranormal”, and the blurb and title suggest “paranormal romance”, but this book is neither. It is really a contemporary fantasy with romantic elements (including some sex scenes). In fact, I would really warn romance readers that The Demon Lover is absolutely not a romance, and does not end with an HEA or even HFN (happy for now). Until you get to the end of the book, the fact that this is conceived as the first book in a series is not apparent. I can see the many misleading paratextual cues really irritating some readers.

Juliet Dark is the pseudonym of Carol Goodman, whose books (which I have not read) combine the historical, Gothic, mystery and suspense genres. The Demon Lover is the first Juliet Dark book.

The Demon Lover begins with Callie, a folklorist who specializes in the demon lover in Gothic literature, taking a position at Fairwick College in upstate New York. She buys a historic home with a lot of personality once owned by the novelist Dahlia LaMotte, a writer of nineteenth century “bodice-rippers.” And then she starts getting visitations from the local incubus.

From the beginning, I felt The Demon Lover was bogged down with too much detail. Here’s an example. Callie finds a desk in the house:

I left all the objects where they were and added my own collection of stone and shells, as well as pens and pencils, tape, stapler, a dagger-shaped letter opener I’d gotten as a souvenir at an [sic] Scottish castle, file cards, and notebooks. I unpacked the reference books I liked to have near me while I was writing — the abridged Oxford English Dictionary (a gift from my grandmother when I graduated college), the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Roget’s Thesuarus, The Golden Bough, From the Beast to the Blonde, Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic, and half a dozen other books on fairy tales and folklore. On one shelf I put my favorite novels, from The Mysteries of Udolpho and Jane Eyre through Rebecca and Dahlia LaMotte’s The Dark Stranger. When I’d placed my pens in my Oxford University mug (a souvenir from my junior year abroad) and emptied a handful of paperclips into a chipped Sevres teacup, which was the last remnant (according to my grandmother) of my great-great-grandmother’s wedding china, I finally felt at home.

Having the first person protagonist be a specialist in Gothic literature adds a nice layer of literary referentiality, as when Callie looks at herself in the mirror and thinks, “before long I’d be running in my diaphanous nightgown toward a cliff with a castle looming in the background”. I wish Callie’s knowledge of the paranormal had the same effect: she seems to have absolutely no demon-dar whatsoever. Perhaps Dark was trying to relay the idea that an intellectual understanding of the paranormal in no way equips people to actually deal with it.

Callie (actually Calleach (pronounced Cay-lex) McFay) was not an appealing protagonist, a fatal problem in this kind of novel. When I think of the some really compelling first person narrators in paranormal/fantasy/etc., like Sookie Stackhouse, Katniss Everdeen, Anita Blake, Rose from Vampire Academy, Callie doesn’t come close. I can’t say she had a specific character trait, or took a specific action, that I hated. She was just boring:

After dinner we repaired to the living room where we all rubbed our stomachs and moaned, although in truth I didn’t feel uncomfortably full despite all I’d eaten, or drunk despite all I’d had to drink. I just felt content.

I found myself quite impatient with Callie and with the whole novel. We meet many different characters, fey, vampires, incubi, witches, etc., but they are not fleshed out or memorable (except for their cringe-inducing names like “Dean Book” or “Phoenix”). The Demon Lover is 450 pages, but I only read about half of those, skimming the rest to see if anything in later chapters would capture my attention. There are elements here very reminiscent of other series: a female protagonist coming to terms with a magical world and her own connections to it (Sookie), a dark mysterious male who is strangely compelling (Edward), a magical school that operates in the real world (name it), a talking doormouse companion (Erm…Snow White?). The sluggish, overly descriptive feel — perhaps necessary given its purpose in setting up a series — did not endear me to the novel.

I also didn’t like being hit with sex scenes so early in the book. I found them gratuitous — why do I want to know what this woman’s vagina is doing? We’ve just met! Sex scenes with incubi must be a real challenge to write, but I had had quite enough of nature similes by the second chapter (“he felt like a wave crashing over me”).

To me, DNF usually means “there is something so bad about this book that I just couldn’t continue.” But The Demon Lover is not a horrible book by any means. I did not like the writing style, finding it to be very wooden, and I felt the pacing was all over the place, but I can’t say the writing is *bad* per se, and I can see that this book would appeal to other readers. It is certainly a very ambitious and full story, and the many literary references and allusions are enjoyable. So, yes, I gave up on it, but that doesn’t mean this book sucks.

7 responses so far

A Nice Surprise, a DNF, and an Iron Duke

Oct 27 2010 Published by under DNF Reflection, Reviews

1. A Nice Surprise

Sometimes those free Kindle books are really a great deal…

I recently read Compromising Positions, by Jenna Bayley-Burke (Samhain, 2009) and really enjoyed it. A fun, sexy, inventive contemporary romance with an absurd premise that somehow works: Sophie, a forensic accountant, is pinch hitting at her sister’s gym while big sis finishes out her pregnancy on bed rest. Sophie needs a partner for a very popular couples yoga class, “Sensational Sex”, which demonstrates Kama Sutra moves, and ends up with David, a lawyer who happens to work for Sophie’s brother-in-law’s international fitness empire. The scenes in which they are demonstrating the moves are actually pretty interesting. Sophie has had a crush on David forever, but she’s the type that forgoes dating in favor of taking care of her elderly parents, and he’s the type that prefers leggy blondes and no strings (Sophie is short and curvy, with dark curls).

In many ways, this is a very typical contemporary, with some really bizarre plots thrown in (add embezzling, business competition, a burgeoning fitness food empire, sibling rivalry, a sexual harassment lawsuit, and a possibly evil stepmother, and you’re half way there). And there were definitely some problems, like David’s tendency to use pejorative feminine terms to refer to things that threatened his masculinity (i.e. “girly”), Sophie’s not requiring him to wear a condom (it’s ok, she’s on the pill. *eye roll*), and her pathetic/stalkerish move of purchasing a huge king bed that will fit his body before they go on a single date. But somehow this book kept me hooked, and at times I was really impressed with the subtle ways the author showed the development of the relationship and the characters. David moves in a believable way from a commitment-phobic ladies man, to someone who truly doubts his ability to be the man Sophie deserves, to true love. In turn, Sophie gets over both her physical crush, and her opinion of David as purely superficial, and starts to appreciate him for who he really is. Despite starting out pretty uneven, their relationship becomes an even match quickly. This book kept surprising me, with realistic insight from the characters like the moment Sophie realizes “she could not handle a casual relationship with David” , and when David realizes “How wonderful life would be if he could just trust himself to be who she thought he was.” I enjoyed it, and I’m not the only one, as the 4.5 star rating at Amazon and a recent positive review from Laurie Gold, attest. It’s no longer free, but I think if you like sexy contemporaries and want something a bit different, this is a good bet.

2. A DNF

I rarely fail to finish a book I start. I envy my fellow readers who can abandon a book without looking back, but I’m just not there yet. So it killed me to put this one down, and it was especially hard given that I really enjoy Julie Ann Long’s books. She writes regencies that are, if not the most historically rich, very full of life, with really fun, likable characters. For me, they are rollicking good times. The Runaway Duke is the story of the son of a duke whose father has abused him so badly that he fakes his own Waterloo death and goes to work in the stables of the Tremaine family. He falls in love with their mischievous daughter, Rebecca, when he assists her in escaping a bad marriage.

What did it for me was Connor’s dialect. In fairness, Connor is a few years older than Rebecca, and he is also posing as Irish, but his constant references to her as “wee Becca”, not just occasionally, but EVERY TIME he addresses her, were impossible for me to move beyond. Add to that a hide bag full of “aye”s and “ye”s and “’tis”s and I’m done for. Connor first meets “wee Becca” when he has to get her down from a tree, and I appreciate the fact that this is a relationship that will probably grow from one in which Connor feels like an older brother into a more equal one, but it’s just too annoying to get from here to there. Just read this, and see if you can blame me:

Rebecca has stolen a rifle from her father. She says:

“Papa is away in St. Eccles today. And he didn’t lock it up or hide it.”

And Connor says:

“Well, he doesna lock ye into your room at night either, does he, and just look at the trouble that wee bit of oversight has caused.” Connor shook his head ruefully. “Your poor, trusting da. Wee Becca, a man is entitled to believe his muskets are safe from his daughters.”

As the Scottish say, “better to be a coward than a corpse”. So I quit.

3. An Iron Duke

I really, really enjoyed it. It’s just so unique and fun. For me, the great strengths were the detailed, imaginative, and compelling world building and the exciting, swashbuckling plot, both of which made the book impossible to put down. It seemed like around every corner (or passage) there was a new wonder to behold. Just a magical reading experience, really.  There are so many glowing reviews out there — an overwhelming number of  “A+” and “five star” reviews, from romance and nonromance readers alike –  that I don’t feel the need to write my own at this point, but in case you have been living under a rock, I suggest you click over to one of my favorites, by Nicola O. of Alpha Heroes.

One interesting aspect of the reception of this book is that a small minority of reviewers, (for example, Ron Hogan at Beatrice, reviewers like this one on Goodreads, and if I am interpreting the “painful lapses” comment correctly, Rike at All About Romance) who, despite absolutely loving The Iron Duke, consider it to contain one or two scenes of rape. I personally think that if The Iron Duke had been a regency romance or a contemporary, there would be a lot more debate about the nonconsensual sex in the book, but given the completely unique and unusual — and I mean truly mindblowing — setting, it’s low on the list of things to note. When I saw Ron Hogan’s  comments about rape, I thought perhaps this was a “new to the romance genre” attitude, but the AAR and Goodreads reviewers, and apparent agreement on Twitter from the likes of Avon editor Esi Sogah, crush that theory. It will be interesting to see what consensus emerges around Rhys and Mina’s first and last sexual encounters. My own experience reading the book is that the first sexual encounter is nonconsensual in a way that shocks both of them, i.e. unintentionally nonconsensual, and the last one is consensual. I had no problem with either one.

Have you had a good experience reading a freebie lately? Can you overlook dialect that bugs you? How about The Iron Duke? Is it on your list? And did you know that when I have no idea how to end a blog post, I ask questions?

30 responses so far

DNF Smackdown: Grandma Racy v. Outlander

Dec 25 2009 Published by under DNF Reflection, Genre musings, Navel gazing

You know those success stories where romance novel readers convince their skeptical friends and family to try a romance, and they love it? This is not one of those.

IMG_4569

Grandma's Fridge

To my delight, my mother, who is a voracious reader of nonfiction and literary fiction, picked up a copy of Outlander a couple of months ago. She lives down the street, and whenever I visited, I would surreptitiously glance at the placement of the bookmark to see what progress she was making. At first, she seemed genuinely enthused and the bookmark moved steadily forward. After a few weeks, as the bookmark stalled, I started to doubt her protestations to the effect that “I’m reading it, really”.

Finally, I confronted her with the evidence: the bookmark had been at p. 233 for a month. She looked at me, took a deep breath, glanced at my husband (my husband! the traitor!) for moral support, and said “It’s awful honey. I can’t finish it.”

After I removed the dagger from my heart, I asked her to at least explain herself on this blog.

J: What motivated you to pick up Outlander?

GR: My younger daughter was very interested in the genre. I saw the Gabaldon books, and they looked interesting.

Mr. Racy: Cuz she was feeling a bit randy.
GR: Aye lad.

*Ten minute digression into faux Gabaldon speak.*

J: What do you usually read?

GR: I read everything. My area of abiding interest is Russian and English literature, but I am equally interested in exploration and maritime history. And I like poetry.

J: What are a few of your favorites?

GR: My favorite novel of all time is Anna Karenina. I also loved The Grapes of Wrath, which I first read about 25 years ago. It had a profound impact on me and opened my eyes to poverty.

J: What did you expect Outlander to be like when you started reading it.

GR: I thought it would be a good, fun read. I’m very interested in the Scots heritage and was looking forward to that.

J: And after the first few pages, what did you think?

GR: I was bothered by the constant stream of dialogue between Claire and Jamie, and the dialect that I thought was overused. It is a good tale, but there were elements in the way the book was constructed that prevented me from giving over to the story and the fantasy.

Mr. Racy: “Git yer haggis, right here… chopped heart and lungs… boiled in a real sheep’s stomach… tastes as good as it sounds! Good fer what ails ye, eh?”
GR: [gales of laughter]

J: [fuming] What else?

GR: Because I know something about that period in time, the fact that nothing really horrible happened to Claire after she went back in time, was too unbelievable. I also thought Clare’s assimilation was also unbelievable. No one would have had anything to lose by taking advantage of her sexually or otherwise. So why didn’t they? Surprisingly, I had no problem with the time travel. I thought the author handled that really well.

J: But how about that Jamie? Isn’t he-?

Mr. Racy: “Ah, ya silk-wearin’ buttercup…”
GR: Fegs!!

J: You guys, cut it OUT!

GR: He was a very typical hero. I thought, “Oh, here he is. Here’s the guy. He’s going to sweep her off her feet, save the day. The Scottish superman.” I mean, any normal guy would have been dead many times over.

J: So is it the fantasy elements that you didn’t enjoy?

GR: The number one reason I did not enjoy the book was the dialogue. I just don’t think Claire would have been able to understand most of what was said, for one thing. All the Scottish-ese just got in the way.

Mr. Racy: Aye woman, get me my haggis!!!
GR: Aye, me laddie!
Mr. Racy: Yer a bonnie lass. (shouting towards the living room) Where are me wee bairns??!!

J: (Growling) But back to Jamie. So is there something problematic about the fact that you have a hero and heroine and you know they are getting together problematic?

GR: I was hoping for a heroine who was going to get through the book without a Jamie. I don’t read anything with fantasy usually. I’m reading the Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859) right now, which was written for a popular audience, and it’s predictable, but I like it. It’s not the predictability I don’t like, which the Wilkie has. I’m against predictability that isn’t well done.

I loved Exodus, for example. Ben is a hero. He leaves America and goes to Israel, and does superhuman things and gets the girl. But to me, he was believable.

And I loved Chewbacca, and Incredible Hulk. So I don’t have a problem with fantasy.

J: (changing tacks) Did you know you bought me my first romance novel when I had mono in 7th grade?

GR: (horrified) I didn’t.

J: (triumphant) Yes, you did. It featured a woman doing it against a tree with the hero. I had a dread fear of splinters after reading it.

GR: [hangs head, rubs eyes.] What was wrong with me? [Silence. Looks up.] You must have asked me for it. I never read them.

J: Didn’t you have friends who read romances?

GR: Yes, but not me. When I think back on it now, the woman was the heroine in the books I loved as a teen. Nancy Drew, the nurse novels [can’t remember titles], Wonder Woman was one of my favorite characters.

J: Why do you think you have never read romance novels?

GR: Cause I never had to fantasize about having a man.

Mr. Racy: [loud guffawing, followed by silence and a puzzled look.]

J: (Splutters in outrage) What? I’m happily married!!!!!!

GR: Well (backtracking), I think I’m just rooted in concrete reality. The romance novels around back in the day didn’t have the female heroines I would have liked to read about. You have to remember that I went all though Catholic schools. The strong women in that literature were always punished severely for stepping outside the role prescribed for women. I didn’t want more of the same as an adult.

J: You haven’t mentioned anything written by women among your favorites so far.

GR: Oh! Edith Wharton, Eudora Welty, Mary McCarthy, Zelda Fitzgerald are some of my favorites.

J: Was there anything you liked about Outlander?

GR: Yes, I liked the part when Claire was figuring out medicinal techniques, and how to mix herbs. I liked Claire in general, and how she translated her talent from the 20th century to the past.

J: Will you ever finish Outlander?

GR: No.

J: Will you ever read another romance novel recommended by your youngest daughter?

GR: No.

J: Why not? You don’t like love stories?

GR: [The woman is not giving in. Sooooooo typical. Can you win an argument with your mother? I can’t.] I do enjoy love stories. I loved The Age of Innocence, Anna Karenina, the BBC Cranford series.

J: But things don’t end up well in those books for the lovers.

GR: They just seem to struggle more realistically.

J: Have you ever read a love story that you liked which ended happily?

GR: Geez, I read so much, Jess, I can’t remember. I guess if it ended happily it wouldn’t be worth writing.

J: Why not?

GR: I think human beings are naturally attracted to tragedy and are always sort of looking out at how people go through tragedy and how they solve it. It’s resolution that the reader wants, one way of the other. I think Anna Karenina would have been a successful novel if Anna had gone on with Vronsky and her husband looked the other way, which he was willing to do, but that’s not resolution.

J: Why do you read?

GR: Reading is my hobby. I love books. I love books all around me. I hate giving them away, although I do. It’s like parting with friends, but there are people who love to read and can’t afford their own books. It’s therapeutic, it’s educational, it leads me to new places.

J: What do you make of your youngest daughter’s reading habits.

GR: I find them amusing. That’s all I’m going to say.

[Just wait dear reader. This is a woman who always has something to say.]
[five seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1--]

Ok… I’m not judging it. I think it’s a very, very interesting activity, that whole genre. The romance novels served important functions for women who were at home 50 years ago when I began parenting. Most of my friends devoured them and exchanged them. You’d have a cigarette and sit down and read your story. You took it everywhere. But I never read them even then.

J: What did you read, then?

GR: I first got serious about reading in 1956-7 when I began to read Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dreiser. I began my journey with the American novelists.

J; Who did you talk to about those books?

GR: Women I knew didn’t really talk to each other in those days. And they didn’t acknowledge reading them to each other. It was not considered appropriate. There was a bias against meeting other women during the workday, when you were supposed to be taking care of your kids. Our roles were very clear. Remember when JFK ran for President, and people started having coffee klatches to talk about politics. So we began to have coffee hours, and that was the beginning. Invariably, the discussion would turn to other things.

J: When did you read a feminist book? Was it Betty Friedan? Late 1960s?

GR: Yes, but I had had very strong role models. All she did for me was legitimize what I was already feeling. In my own family, my mother and my aunts were very strong. The prescribed role for me in the 50s and 60s felt like being in a strait jacket.

J: Was there any connection between your fiction and nonfiction reading?

GR: I don’t think I realized the impact of my reading on me, until the late 1960s. Then I was able to put everything I knew and read and experienced into a context. That’s what Friedan did for us.

19 responses so far

DNF Reflection: The Palace of Varieties, by James Lear

Dec 24 2009 Published by under DNF Reflection

*Note: This reviews contains material that is not suitable for minors.

This book was recommended to me. It was one of my 2009 resolutions to read more m/m romance, erotica, etc..

In looking about the web in preparation for this review, I discovered that James Lear is the nom de plume of the novelist Rupert Smith. He lives in London and is the 2008 Winner of Erotic Awards “Best Writer”. The UK’s Guardian published a fascinating reflection by Smith on his sideline, “Dirty Sexy Money: The writer Rupert Smith on his lucrative porn-lit sideline”

While romance readers complain (for good reason) that romance is not taken seriously, Lear notes that genre fiction is at least “out”. The situation is worse for erotica, especially gay erotica:

Erotic fiction, gay or straight, is the most reviled of all genres. While science fiction, horror, crime and romance have their own well-stocked sections, erotica languishes in a dog-eared corner at the back, near the lavs. Some straight smut makes it into airports, to refresh the tired business traveller, but gay material remains beyond the pale.

He is very clear on the purpose of his Lear books:

Rupert Smith hopes to make you laugh; James Lear hopes to make you come.

And there, forgive me, is the rub. Erotic fiction has a purpose, and it’s not a very highbrow one. James Lear’s novels are designed specifically as aids to masturbation: two good orgasms per chapter for younger readers, one for the over forties. Each encounter gives the reader a variation on the theme, keeping the interest fresh. The plot exists to carry the reader from one orgasm to the next.

I think that erotic literature serves the same purpose as other genre fiction, but with a more literal outcome.

I find myself contrasting Lear’s bluntness with the protestations of female erotica writers that they are not doing the same thing. Why is that? How is this any different from a Spice Brief, and why is it so important to those writers to minimize the intent of erotic writing?

Lear also talks about who reads him and who writes gay erotica. I thought this remark was very interesting, in light of the Lambda fiasco earlier this year,

James Lear’s most enthusiastic fans are straight women, who love reading about male/male sex.

In the world of literary fiction, an author’s sexual preference has a massive impact on the way his or her books are marketed, reviewed and sold; in porn nobody cares much.

It’s a field dominated by women, who approach any and every kink with gusto. There are Surrey housewives turning out explicit male homosexual porn.

I was glad to have found that Guardian article, because it helped me to pinpoint exactly why I can’t finish this book: I am not turned on by the sex in it, and since that’s pretty much the point of a book like this, there’s nothing else to keep me reading. The issue for me is not the homosexuality — I’m straight, but over the past year I have read books with same sex encounters that I found very sexy — it’s that the sexual encounters take place between strangers, and that’s not my thing. It functions primarily as fantasy — everyone is gay or up for gay sex, everyone is well-equipped, and everyone is always hard, ready to go, and ready to go again immediately. But because it’s not my fantasy, I was bored and finally put the book down.

This book is very well written, very very funny (the humor was my favorite part), and immerses the reader believably in interwar London’s seedy theatres, back alleys, washrooms, and pubs. It is narrated in the first person by Paul Lemoyne, a young gay man who comes to London, get’s a job in a theatre, and begins a career as a prostitute. Paul is insatiable sexually. Nothing throws him, and that’s part of his charm. Here’s an example:

…the sudden appearance in the room of an unexpected third party. For a moment it flashed across my mind that I had been lured here to be the meat in some kind of sandwich — a thought that, since my amorous initiation in the toilets of Waterloo station, only increased my excitement.

Or this,

Excited as I was, I was somewhat concerned by the task ahead of me. I could barely get my hands round it, so how on earth was I going to get that huge prick in my mouth — or my arse? I experienced a moment of trepidation — but, being the thrill-seeking little slut that I was, it was soon replaced by mindless, drooling lust.

If I had a criticism, it was that I felt I could hear a bit too much of Lear in Paul, who didn’t read as authentic, a bit too much knowing winkage, perhaps a bit of interfering distancing (if that makes sense) between Lear and Lemoyne. I’m no literary critic, and it’s not easy to put my finger on it.

I think anyone who enjoys this kind of book would really enjoy this one.

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