Violet Malice has devoured yet another work of hot hot hot erotica this week. Carefully turning the pages on, every evening as June winds its way up and down, repeatedly, again and again, without fail. On the hunt for a bedtime read that feels like silk and sunshine and sucks like quicksand. Violet’s weekly adult book review attempts to answer that gurning question: can a good book ever be as smoking HOT as a good fuck?

Book title: Darling
Author: Harriet Daimler (Iris Owens)
First published: 1956

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: Gloria, a self-proclaimed ‘refrigerated cunt’ living in New York, is raped by a man with a bad leather jacket. This event turns her into a raging nymphomaniac. Obviously, it goes without saying that a total nympho is unable to satisfy her sexual desire. Ahem. The story tracks Gloria’s lust fueled journey of middling sex and frustration as well as her desperate hunt to find her rapist whom she wants to fuck and kill.

Front cover: A jolly front cover, which is wholly inappropriate. Like putting a cartoon horse on a book about hand, foot and mouth disease. The book is in no way jolly or throwaway. It is hardcore. Both in terms of the storyline and the frequent unquenchable sex that takes place between the covers. If I was designing the front cover I would go for a close-up of a bear trap in some woods with a pair of frilly knickers inside and the severed leg of some leather clad sex offender who has badly misjudged his prey.

Title: Again, wholly inappropriate. Darling suggests some flimsy book about nice sexy sex and nice sexy wives having nice sex and nice biscuits. Most of the men that Gloria fucks call her ‘darling’ during intercourse, which is probably the reason for the pathetic title.

Best two-word phrase in the book: Sanitary fucking and/or indestructible erection.

Best over use of a hyphen: Sea-and-sperm-drenched.

Best sentence/s in the book: Lots and lots of appalling erotic writing. Below are a few favourites –

His hopeful immense erection had wilted like a sick plant on his leg.

I’m gonna dig so deep into your ass, you’ll taste my come on your tongue.

You think this horse opera we carry on is love?

He used her as he would a life-sized sponge with a few openings.

His eyes were like milky white sperm. Probably his whole body filled with sperm up to the top of his head, and his prick his only exit.

Sexual content: Legend has it that the founder of Olympia Press – the one and only – Maurice Girodias asked Daimler to “tone it down a bit love”. Apparently, he said that it wasn’t necessary for every page to be sexual. I’d like to read the original. In my book, there’s no such thing as too much hot sauce on one’s furry breakfast cereal.

The sex is well drawn and vivid. Hot and hungry. Funny and frenzied. It does tip over slightly into the world of fantasy, which is more often the case with sex books, because ultimately the aim is to turn up the gas on the sex cooker rather than tell a coherent and believable story. (Some bores might say that all good sex is fantasy. Or at least that fantasy makes better sex.)

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Overall conclusion: 8 out of 10. A must-read. Far from perfect but without doubt an unappreciated masterbeast. Starts off rocky but finds its feet. Feeds the hungry mouths as well as the mind. Very obviously written extremely quickly and as such would have benefited from more time wanking over it. Despite the difficult plotline, the book has multiple levels: (1) it can just be a good fuck book – some people think it’s a very explicit rape fantasy, (2) however I think there is a really challenging subtext about rape and sexual desire.

Gloria hunts down and kills her rapist – the man with the white eyes – and despite her questions to try and spark his recognition as she seduces and eventually kills him – that he has been to her flat before that he has felt her body before, he does not remember her. He treated her as an object. An orifice. She returns the favour.

Throughout the book there are some very powerful observations that are left there for the reader to steam past or ponder, whatever you desire. There’s a real art in that. You can lick the cream straight off the top or dig deeper into the trifle.

Titillation station: Thumbs up the wank bank!

Food for thought: Female writers of erotica are like hen’s tits. What agro-smut from the seemingly unassuming! I am pleased Iris Owens didn’t use a male pen name. I am pleased that the book is so unapologetic and frayed around the edges. I am pleased that Gloria kills the fucking a-hole in the end. I am pleased that the characters are all flawed and grotesque and thrash about the page. I am very pleased that this book exists.

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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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