The Raunch Review: Erotica Book 2

Violet Malice

Violet Malice takes a second bite of the cherry. On the hunt for a HOT and STIMULATING bedtime read. Violet has consumed another work of erotica this week. As she attempts to answer that yearning question: can a good book ever be as unputdownable as a good fuck?

Erotica: Screen on top of a GB flag
Screen

Book title: Screen
Author: Barry N. Malzberg
First published: 1970

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: An everyday office pawn called Martin, who works for the New York City Welfare Department, goes to the cinema to get off. He steps right through the screen and is transformed into a film star who gets lots and lots of hot sex action. In just one weekend he finds himself married to Sophia Loren, romping with Elizabeth Taylor in a budget hotel after they escape from a half-cut Richard Burton and seduced reluctantly by Brigitte Bardot. He then decides to put it to the test: is real-life sex with an average woman better than his masturbatory escape hatch? The answer obviously (1. the author is a man; 2. who also happens to have worked in the NYC Welfare Department in real-life) is a resounding NO. The book ends with him fucking Doris Day, just so you know.

Front cover: Nice. Arty. Tits. Plus cinema ticket. (I suspect the author might like melons: a large slice of the book is focused on what you can do with a pair of tits and a match-fit tongue.)

Best two-word phrase in the book: Turgid genitals and/or directorial scrotum.

Best sentence in the book: (Please note the book is full of very very very long sentences.) And yet it does not stop there; this is Elizabeth Taylor and for her I carry on the longest sustained orgasm I have ever had in my life; far, far longer than the ten or twenty-second specials which I have managed for Sophia; it is as if the mysterious hidden triggers are blocked inside me on OPEN and I hang at the very crest of it for an incredible, for an almost frightening extension of time, feeling that because this is Elizabeth Taylor herself this time, I may literally never stop coming and my hands reach again for the remote hugeness of her breasts and I subside finally, breaking upon her, all sobs and shouts, mingled in the warm sheltering spaces of the room. 

I also very much liked some part sentences including: I tried to listen to the spang of urine in the bowl; and throw my load all the way into her. 

Sexual content: Packed with back-to-back fucking. The erotic descriptions are fantastic and funny. However, I do have a boner to pick! Our floored narrator is forever complaining about having to have sex with beautiful actresses. He paints women as horrifying sexual predators. Stunning women hideously jealous of each other. Most of the bonking he has is to placate these monsters. Obviously, this is his fantasy so he must like that sort of thing, but it does continue that worrying trend of men resenting and being threatened by women’s sexuality.

The bitterness/hatred really does jar in the end – our Martin does appear to really detest women. And like wanking. In equal measure. This is brought into sharp relief when he sets up a few out-of-office sessions with a real-life woman that also works at the NYC government department, who he cruelly describes to himself and the reader. He has sex with this 3D woman more out of boredom and because he can rather due to a genuine desire to feel someone else’s breath on his head. It is in this part of the book that the narrator betrays himself as wholegrain mustard misogynist outside the possible kink of his ruminating on Hollywood’s screen sirens.

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Overall conclusion: 7 out of 10. Fucking fantastic book. Brilliant writer of erotica. Despite the massive issues: the misogyny and the lazy fall back to weak man being hunted down by a pack of insatiable women, who just want to lie back and be fucked. Please note not all women want this. Not all women are greedy and selfish. It is not comfortable to be presented with the views of a narrator however flawed who vehemently dislikes and resents women, particularly women he finds attractive. The rules say that if you like someone, you should be nice to them.

Titillation station: Four fingered sausage roll (lubricated)

Food for thought: Finally, an interesting book given the rise in porn addiction and society’s obsession with the motion picture. Our collective loneliness and frustration. Maybe we should all give up on real-life sex. It’s much less stressful, less effort, less unpredictable and less risky to turn inwards and let the person that knows us most intimately give us exactly what we want. Ourselves. The question is how much of our sexual fantasies are within our control? Or how much cum does it take to satisfy a tractor?

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The Raunch Review: Sex Book 1

Violet Malice has decided to review erotica. Not dirty books. Erotic literature. There is a difference. Erotic literature is supposed to have some literary merit. Violet is going in search of a HOT and STIMULATING bedtime read. And will also, obviously, be assessing the level of titillation achieved, in order to answer that yearning question: can a good book ever be as exciting as a good fuck?

Used copy of book being reviewed: The Girl Beneath the Lion
The Girl Beneath the Lion

Book title: The Girl Beneath The Lion
Author: Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues
Translator: Richard Howard
First published: 1959

Back cover blurb that caught Violet’s attention: Few novelists have been able to catch the essence of a woman’s erotic impulses with quite such truth and poetic feeling, nor in a prose of such distinction. Violet’s response to this was, “yeh fucking right, we’ll just see about that.”

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: A young virgin called Vanina (nice, one letter off vagina) gets all horned up on holiday in Sardinia and tells this dude who she sees staring at her on the beach to do a few things in order to eventually have it off with her in some woods one evening. She never allows him to speak, which is actually quite a good strategy to not get disappointed by someone’s personality.

Front cover: WTF? A badly photoshopped pic of some random dude. The book is about a young girl’s sexual awakening! Who in their right mind chose to represent this by putting some haughty looking middle-class looking male slapped up the front in a turtleneck. On the plus side, a shite front cover makes me more interested to know what’s under the covers. Wink. Wink. Stink. Stink.

Best two-word phrase in the book: Couldn’t decide between musky melons and faecal zone. But I do like to have my erotica caked and eaten.

Comments on the title: Our Vanina fantasizes about having sex with a lion and the general vibe is that she’s into S&M and being dominated by a violent animal/man.

Best sentence in the book: It is not absolutely necessary that he love me; it is not even indispensable that he have a soul, that he be inhabited by a kind of seagull. 

Sexual content: Bit sparse. But refreshingly strange. On page 80/1 there is an interesting passage about a man in a cheese shed that rubs cream cheese up Vanina’s thighs as some sort of skincare routine. She is 8 years old at this point so it’s unsavoury to say the least. The main sex bit on page 104 onwards is pretty boring – metaphors such as burning rod of iron and grand statements after the fact such as the limits of her self-hood dropped away are pretty rubbish and sentimental. But I suppose it’s an accurate depiction of a man imagining what a woman’s fantasies might be.

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Overall conclusion: 3 out of 10. None of this rings true. Very reductive. Boring erotica. No sexy describing words or hot lust action. Just overly sentimental horse shit – too much detail about nature and the sea which is obviously a metaphor for stupidity – with no actual pay off. Overuse of the word love – which is a total burn off – because love obviously is all a young girl cares about.

Titillation station: Two fingers down (dissatisfied)

Food for thought: He does end it in a very surprising way. After they’ve had it off, you learn very abruptly that her parents were killed by a violent bunch of young men and that she witnessed all of this as well as her mother been raped by these men. She then runs away from her so-called ‘lover’ and leaves Italy without ever wanting to know his name.

Finally, I have a problem with erotica that paints kinks as always linked to damage. I think this book should have been about the guy on the cover having it off with a fridge. I would have enjoyed that more. Stick to what you blow.

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Violet Malice

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