The Raunch Review: Book 25

Spring is in the air, my dear! Or that’s what I hear from all those party people that like to blow on about the state of the clouds and the moisture levels and all that, where has the sun gone etc etc. Why is it so chuffing cold? Well, at bloody cock-fucking last, that’s what I say.  

My Valentine’s date went pretty badly, thanks for asking. I’d prefer not to go into the ins and outs, but I will because I can see that you’re pleading with me. The long and short of it is (and he was pretty short, in that department) that I caught norovirus from this guy’s arse. I was getting down to it and I suddenly felt very sick indeed. As sick as a projectile vomiting dog with a chronic shitting disease. Subsequently, I experienced the full force of my failure to consider the general rules on hygiene and respectability. Needless to say, he got out of there sharpish and left me swanning around in my own effluent.

Anyway, I’ve pressure washed the carpets and incinerated the duvet covers, so I’m good to blow on. Violet’s weekly adult book review is back and it’s a eye ball squeezer of a dystopian Sci Fi banger set in little England. The aim, as always, is to attempt to answer that scalding question: can a good book ever be as greasy as a good fuck?

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Book title: The Gas
Author: Charles Platt
Publisher of this edition: Savoy Books Ltd
Copyright: © Charles Platt 1970
First published: 1970
Cover illustration: Harry Douthwaite

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis:  An accident in a factory releases a gas, which settles over southern England, and makes everyone go sex mad and/or outrageously violent. In essence, it strips humans and animals of all their inhibitions and pent-up urges. The book follows Vincent, who in part is responsible for the release of the gas, as he tries to get back to his wife and kids in order to take them to Scotland (where the gas can’t reach). 

Title: It does what it says on the tin really. Pretty much sums up what we’re dealing with. The gas happens and nothing will ever be the same again in little England, where everyone is so totally repressed. 

Cover image: The cover is extraordinary and screams FUCK ME I’M A SCI FI CLASSIC. A great example of the crass grisly cover art of that period. The illustration is pretty bestial, aggressive and intimidating, which is an accurate reflection of the shit between the covers. Some strange Medusa like person is dribbling over her own tits, nice. Circles, lots of circles, circles are sexy. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

The aura of sex she was radiating was like sitting next to an electric fire. 

The waves of swelling pleasure emanating from his prick seemed to be coming from the car itself. 

Vincent watched helplessly as the policeman started massaging the dog’s penis, first as if to dispel the pain, but then faster. 

She smelled of sweat and old condoms. 

A party of suburban wives had tied their husbands down naked on the floor in a long line, and were playing a sexual variation of musical chairs on them. 

In the corner, a group of schoolboy plane-spotters had grabbed aircraft models from the check-in counters and were experimentally seeing how far the models’ fuselages would penetrate up each other’s anuses. 

His fingers squelched into her fat, slobbery cunt. 

The priest tried to kneel up, slipped, fell on his side and started shitting uncontrollably. 

He was a red and pink and brown pudding on the floor. 

“I’ve come!” he yelled, jism started rushing up past his face in long, sticky streamers, pulled out of Cathy’s cunt by the roaring wind. 

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Overall sexual content: The book is absolutely crammed with sex and violence. It begins very sexily and then quickly degrades into a sex crazed gore fest. There is a very erotic element to the sex at the beginning of the book, which is urgent and desperate, but not yet totally alienating and hate fuelled. Obviously as the book progresses the sex gets more and more extreme, almost to the point where life no longer matters anymore and sex is used simply as a weapon and orgasm as a means to regaining a small degree of rationality. 

It is very interesting that the sexual anarchy that ensues sees men and women at war with each other. Both men and women seize the opportunity to abuse and violate the opposite sex in a way that implies that that is what they have always wanted but never been brave enough to make happen. 

Overall conclusion: 9 out of 10.

Titillation station: The beginning chapters are right up there on the sexy scales. The sex is hot and titillating, despite the fact that once again men are in the driving seat (metaphorically and literally, lots of sex happens a stolen Rolls Royce) and women are given no choice but to suck it up. However, all the erotic charge of the book dries up instantly as the sex becomes more and more taboo and extreme. 

Food for thought: It is an absolute banger of a book. One of my all time favourites. It’s no wonder that when it was released in the UK in 1980 it was seized by the book police. It is unapologetically rough. In more ways than one. Charles probably wrote it in a week – given the amount of spelling mistakes – and the fact that this writer and journalist in his own right, wrote it for money for the magnificent churner outer of erotic and avant-garde literary fiction Ophelia Press. I’m tempted to read his hands-on non-fiction works on electronics just for kicks. 

There is a big section in the book where Cambridge University students begin kidnapping women to carry out appalling supposedly scientific but totally sexual experiments on them. Most of the descriptions are gratuitous and inherently cruel, with most of the women dying as a result. What is implied here and explicitly stated at one point, is that these men have always felt an inner dislike/threat from female sexuality and take the opportunity in a lawless society to enact horrific acts on women in the name of science, as some sort of fucked up form of revenge for something unsaid/unknown.  

I would have given it the top bollocks (10/10) but the end just deflated my arse before I was satisfied. Sadly, with great ideas sometimes there is no way that the end can live up to the promised climax.

P.S. I wasn’t too keen on the incest stuff even though I get that it’s the big taboo. At least the violence was very obviously horrific, whereas the incest was presented in a loving and sexy way, which was a pretty mouldy dick to swallow. 

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The Raunch Review: Book 20

Violet Malice has been worrying about the cost of living and the sharp increase in the price of salad cream. It’s like they don’t think we’ll notice. It’s £3.29 in ASDA. Like what the total fuck! How is that even possible. The main ingredients are water, vinegar and plastic. As a comparison, you can buy 32 pork mini eggs just a few aisles away for a tight £3.50. Insanity. Or you can get Dr Oetker’s extra strong black food colouring for £1.50, but one unsatisfied customer said that it comes out “kind of grey”. It seems that living comfortably might be the Christmas wish on most of our lips. Having enough warm socks to make a draft excluder and some proper non-scented candles to light up the dark. There are around 20 calories in a tablespoon of semen and sadly very little nutritional value, just so you know. On the other hand, there are around 42 calories per fluid ounce in pussy juice. Sexy. How to stay hot when it’s arctic out there? There she blows, Violet’s weekly adult book review attempts to answer that hangry question: can a good book ever be as thick and saucy as a good fuck?

Book title: Candy
Authors: Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
Publisher of this edition: Bloomsbury
Copyright: © Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg 1958, 1959, 1962, 1964
First published: 1958
Cover art: Doesn’t say

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis:  Eighteen year-old Candy is drop dead gorgeous, so much so that every man she comes into contact with wants to fuck her. The book presents a landslide of farcical sexual encounters, which all involve the naïve young woman being pressured into sex and then something disastrous happens mid-shag. 

Title: The main focus of the book is a woman called Candy. Pretty straightforward. Everyone wants candy. 

Cover image: Nice er… typeface. Pink and curvy. I must say the cover is pretty trashy and childish. I was ashamed to spread the covers on public transport as an experienced reader of quality filth. The illustration of a young woman in just her bra is probably an accurate reflection of the content inside. Pretty damn pathetic. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

She still wasn’t sure she might not be dealing with some kind of raving, anal-erotic maniac. 

You will notice that I have caused my member to become stout and rigid – as though it were in the so-called state of ‘erection’. 

“Here’s a credential for you, momma!” said the police officer in the back seat with her, and he tore open his fly and forced her hand inside. 

“Like salami wouldn’t melt in your mouth!”

He was keeping his eyes trained on the scalloped V, beneath which pulsed Candy’s precious little lamp-pit. 

“Not so distasteful, I daresay, as your fat clit!” 

“Perfect! Her tubes are perfect!” 

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Overall sexual content: Awful. All of the sex is repulsive and ridiculous. A bad tasting combination. The whole book centres on aggressive male desire (so men being helpless sex beasts in the face of young beauty) and the subservience of women, whose bashful desire is seemingly only activated by being needed/wanted by men. 

Candy is forced into sex by her father’s identical twin, a gynaecologist, a hunchback who wants to steal all her money, and a philosopher, not to mention all of the other characters who try to cop a feel (police officers, a psychiatrist, etc etc). The book cums to a big end with a pretty monumental sex scene. A building is struck by lightening and begins to fall apart, which forces her cunt onto the erect penis of a man covered in mud. A statue falls down and becomes impaled in her arsehole as she begins rocking backwards and forwards on this guy’s cock, who she suddenly recognises as her father. 

Overall conclusion: 2 out of 10.

Titillation station: There are a few sexy bits. But on the whole the book is totally ridiculous and vile. Everything withered up and died. One of the quotes on the back of the book says ‘Sex, after this event, will never be the same,’ and I kind of agree, it totally put me off sex with men. Sexual desire presented as a desperate, violent, uncontrollable and selfish sick dog is the anthesis of sexy. Sadly, there are too many real-life examples of this sort of behaviour for the book to be funny. 

Food for thought: Both of the writers (who originally wrote the novel under the pseudonym Maxwell Keaton) freely admitted writing this book just for the money and were flabbergasted when people reviewing the book said that Candy was a satire on Candide. Terry Southern said, “It’s as if you vomit in the gutter and everybody starts saying it’s the greatest new art form, so you go back to see it, and, by God, you have to agree.” 

The raging success of this book is a real shocker. To go down the hell hole of presenting a woman as so desirable that all men will basically rape her – even if you try and present it in a farcical way – is just deplorable. And the fact that Candy is so gullible and so desperate to please, makes it even worse. Female beauty exists to be tarnished and enjoyed at all costs it seems. And male power, physical and well as societal, makes this possible. Everyone that comes to Candy’s rescue tries to get into her knickers, like a run of horrifying dominoes. Because grateful is exactly how you want them. 

In 2006, Playboy Magazine placed Candy at number 22 in its list of the “25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written,” I wonder what sort of fucking prick compiled that list. It seems I might have lost my sense of humour. 

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The Raunch Review: Book 19

Violet Malice has been hard at it. Don’t expect her to back down anytime soon. Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for, like when you queue for two hours for the salad buffet at Pizza Hut and it’s all over dressed and limp around the lips. Some educated people have been saying this book review is a bag of severed dicks and that it should be wiped from the internet like dog shit off a bushy moustache. There are other people that say Violet is choosing the wrong books, you know the valueless pulpy sacks of shit that are not worth the paper they are printed on. They say that maybe she should review the great sex classics written by the inventors of titillation like Henry Miller and all the other bloated big-dicked misogynists that have their heads so far up their own arses that they can’t piss straight. Violet thinks all those people can go fuck themselves. Write your own blog you lazy twats. She’s fine with no one reading any of this – you know what, it’s probably best. So here we go, Violet’s weekly adult book review dives into the 70s this week in an attempt to answer that unadulterated question: can a good book ever be as dishonest as a good fuck?

Book title: Confessions of a Housewife!?*!
Author: Jonathan May
Publisher of this edition: Sphere Books
Copyright: © Jonathan May 1976
First published: 1976
Cover photo: Doesn’t say

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis:  Jonny meets an older woman in a taxi and ends up going home with her. When the horny widow wins a six-week holiday on a spot the ball competition, Jonny finds himself standing in as the ‘housewife’ for her three children. Needless to say, chaos ensues. 

Title: One of the infamous confessions’ books from the 70s, the titles of which all begin the same and focus on the sordid confessions of certain archetypes. This book is particularly playful in that it places the hapless male in the thankless and hopefully totally redundant role of the housewife. 

Cover image: The rogue male is wearing just an apron and drying the dishes, how terrifying. Some hot blonde has got her bare arse all over the surfaces, which obviously turns all our stomachs. Hygiene is a keystone to keeping house. He looks pretty pleased with himself. Like housework is well easy and fun, which is obviously not fucking true. He’s not taking this seriously I suspect, which makes me angry.  

Best sentence/s in the book:

I help the lovely lady on with her flimsy tight black lacy knickers, pulling them carefully up over her long firm thighs, and pressing them into her pussy pelmet so that they nestle snugly in place. 

For a moment I think of that awful bit in Jaws, when the naked bird who’s just had it away, finally has it off by the shark. 

My veal vibrator is rocking and rolling like Chuck Berry with the wind behind him. 

The lady gets her morning tit-bit, and I slide down and give a demonstration of what a cunning linguist I am. 

The first time wasn’t easy, with her lying there like a dead polar bear, and me working away like a docker on overtime. 

The velvet vacuum cleaner is going full force.

By reaching all the way round her, my nimble right hand can manage a bit of extra massage on her booster button. 

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Overall sexual content: Well, well, well. I’m going to shock you now and say that the sex bits are pretty good. Light-hearted, funny and yes, actually, pretty thrilling. The Jonny character is an arrogant cad, but the careful nuance of the writing also makes him a bit of a loser, so it actually works really well. So rather than being a big turn-off, which is what I expected from a sleazy male focused dirty book from the 70s, it was actually a blast. 

Although there are countless motions towards aggressive female desire, the humour and ridicule of the main character make any such comments harmless and part of the overall power struggle inherent to all sexual dynamics. There is great humour in the lies we tell ourselves and the positions we put ourselves in when the curtains are drawn. 

Overall conclusion: 5 out of 10.

Titillation station: A riot really. A great quickie with some laugh out loud moments and no room for any deep thinking. Sometimes that’s exactly what the doctor orders. A momentary escape from reality. 

Food for thought: A prolific and respected sci-fi writer in his own right, Laurence James moonlighted as Jonathan May to write a large helping of this sleaze series. It’s hard to know exactly who they were intended for – my guess is probably men because of the humour and the male focused kink (our Jonny wants to and eventually does have sex with the 17-year-old daughter), but I could be wrong. It seems that pseudonyms helped to save the ‘straight’ writer from any bad shit that might come of writing naughty things. 

Our narrator Jonny calls his prick Edgar, which is actually very funny. It helps to give his cock a life of its own.  There’s no dark undertone to this, but this personification of the genitals does give our protagonist the ability to distance himself from his dick’s behaviour, which is not progress. That way leads to the horror of not being accountable for our actions. Letting ourselves off the meat hook for the good, the bad and the ugly. 

The book is a right laugh, and I really was pleasantly surprised. When I picked the book up, I took a deep breath and steeled myself against what I suspected would be a hornet’s nest of offensive tripe. But I was wrong. These books are a bit of fun. Not to be taken seriously. I mean – of course – they are not the best thing every written, but equally they are far from the worst. It’s actually very hard to write funny. I would gladly have a burrow in the rest of the series when I fancy getting the old laughing tackle out for some gagging. 

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The Raunch Review: Book 14

Violet Malice has been digging out the knitwear and gently handling moth balls. The weather has taken a turn this week, from mild to nippy. It seems that September has burnt itself out and everyone’s legs and bottom cheeks have gone into hibernation. Violet has taken to reading late into the morning, under the covers with a steaming cup of tea and some nice biscuits (describing word rather than nice biscuits themselves which are not actually very nice). Sometimes staying in bed is the best we can do. This week’s reading material has been a bitter lid to lick. Like one of those massive tubs of yogurt with a handle that you buy because it makes sense fiscally, but which turns out to taste like absolute fucking shit. Not all books should be easy and soft, some books are better read pushed up against a load-bearing wall. Violet’s weekly adult book review attempts to answer that overpowering question: can a good book ever be as lip suckingly horrifying as a good fuck?

Book title: The Sluts
Author: Dennis Cooper
Publisher of this edition: Carroll & Graf Publishers
Copyright: © Dennis Cooper 2004
First published: Sections first appeared in various literary magazines
Cover photo: David Sprigle

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: The book is made up of a mishmash of reviews from the pages of a website for gay male escorts, message boards and emails. It focuses on the goings on of one particular escort and his sugar daddy, which escalates into a huge steaming paella of horrendously explicit sex practices, lies, fantasies and online posturing.

Title: The Sluts is a pretty wet nosed title, if you ask me, given the absolute depravity in the book. It probably should have been much more hardcore given that most of the activity in the book focuses on extreme S&M and online sex people obsessing over the thought of young twinks being bred and killed.

Cover image: Well lit! Gritty and raw, full frontal, exactly like the insides.

Best sentence/s in the book:

I would have sold my mother into slavery to bury my face in that ass and feel my tongue inside that warm, perfect body.

His years as a heavy bottom have damaged it beyond repair, but you could say the same thing about the Grand Canyon. 

I recommend doing him with the lights on because you can stretch the elastic and look all the way into his beautiful, pulsing guts. 

He had a reputation among the regulars at the bar as an arrogant creep who charged a ridiculously large fee ($350) to sit on men’s faces and masturbate. 

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Overall sexual content: The book is full of extreme sex so it is very harrowing indeed. I had to have a breather on a number of occasions – particularly when towards the end, the young escort that is the focus of the book is castrated and raped, whilst been made to eat his own testicles.

The format and writing style captures the unrestrained and frightening depths of the online world – dark, unaccountable and anonymous. The narrator and every voice in the book is contradicted or exposed to be lying or withholding information, so the book begins to take on a fantasy of its own. Just when you feel as though something might be certain, everything is turned on its head and truth begins to dribble down your inside leg. Is anything true? Is anyone being serious? Is all this just a big collective wank fantasy?  

Much like the incel forums of today, which advocate sexual violence against women, there is a monstrously real quality to the sentiments expressed in the book. And even if these individuals are just fantasising about murdering beautiful young escorts and getting off on it – is that in itself OK? What about free speech? If every response is an escalation, if we need harder and harder stimulus, where will it end? Death and destruction? The final curtain. La petite mort pulls itself back together and then snuffs out for good. 

The online world has blown up the hornet’s nest of sex and debauchery and our ability to take on new identities and express extreme views to get a reaction. It has enabled us to get unrestricted access to anything we want. Enter conversations and be part of communities that we may not have had access to previously – but this can be positive and negative. Certainly, the book showcases the dangerous quicksand of message boards and online forums, which suck people in and pump violently until all that is left is bleached bones and a bucket of cum. 

Overall conclusion: 6 out of 10.

Titillation station: Sawdust and celibacy.

Food for thought: Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a place for S&M and serious kink. What a beautiful flinching portmanteau of sadism (the pleasure from inflicting pain) and masochism (the pleasure from receiving it). First spewed from those two great fucking writers: sadism comes from the French sadisme named after the Marquis de Sade and masochism from that old bastard English named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The crucial thing about power and submission is the line really. Between perineum and arsehole. The space between the collar. The perspiration between pleasure and pain. Life and death. Fantasy and reality. Art and literature. Anticipation and… At what point do the seams come open and the doors fall off.

We are all shaped by power dynamics. Sex is about power. Sometimes the powerful want to get on their carpet burned fucking knees and dine out on shit and vice versa. But I would suggest that pain and abuse without trust becomes a whole different beast when it makes that leap into the real world. 

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The Raunch Review: Book 13

Violet Malice has been off the radar for a week. Mainly because there were 32 lasagnas in the fridge that needed eating up and no one else fit enough for the job. Violet can really put it away when she wants to, just saying. Aside from the deep pasta trough of mid-September, Violet has also been consuming reading materials with gusto. Sadly, this latest book was like sucking on a used Johnny and then somehow finding it wrapped around the bilge pump of the rumpy pumpy section of the four seasons chamber orchestra. If Violet wasn’t so committed to the integrity of this unflinching review then the book at issue would have been thrown out of the window into a waiting dog’s arse. Or most likely it would have been placed in the Ramsgate library LARGE PRINT aisle even though it wasn’t from there and as such would have totally collapsed the shelving system. Satire. Violet’s weekly adult book review – yet again – attempts to answer that technical question: can a good book ever be as pop-eyed and yellow as a good fuck?

Front cover of Dead Babies by Martin Amis

Book title: Dead Babies
Author: Martin Amis
Publisher of this edition: Vintage UK, Random House
Copyright: © Martin Amis 1975
First published: 1975
Cover illustration: Sebastian Helling

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: A group of posh people, who are neither likeable nor particularly like each other, are in some big house and some American people arrive for the weekend. They have lots of drugs and sex organs. Obviously, it degrades.

Title: Don’t care. Characters refer to dead babies a few times but I really couldn’t be arsed to try and work out what the hell was being alluded to, sometimes you know the pay-off is not going to be worth the effort. I suspect that it relates to some ridiculous view that the vile characters in the book have that everyone else in the world is an idiot and should shut the fuck up and eat dead babies or something pathetic like that, much like the satirical suggestion pushed by Jonathan Swift that the Irish should eat their own children when things get tight. Satire = well intelligent.

Cover image: Pretty budget if you ask me. Someone got paid to drag a few clouds across a turquoise sky and lob in a few wobbly eggs/disco biscuits. The font – technically known as totally shagged – obviously suggests some sort of narcotics abuse given the inconsistency and overhang of the lettering. They should have spelt Martin’s name wrong – that would have been funny.

Best sentence/s in the book:

“You look absolutely extraordinary. Like a sex cubicle.”

Andy had had a coltish, alcoholic erection.

“Heard about The Body Bar in Santa Barbara? No? Hell of a fuckin place. The waiters and waitresses are nude, natch – and you get fucked there for the cover charge. But you hear the gimmicks? You can have cuntcubes in your drinks. I mean it. And not just flavoured with cunt. Real juice in the cubes. They got… yeah, they got tit soda, cock cocktails, pit popsicles… Oh, yeah, and icecream that tastes of ass. Hell of a place.” 

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Overall sexual content: I had this joke in the olden days: I went to bed with Martin Amis and was underwhelmed. Sometimes I said disappointed instead of underwhelmed depending on my mood. Well, Martin, I let you under the covers again and I started feeling agitated by your sour tongue and your massive ego. You can write Martin – but you’re much less good at it than you think you are.  

The sex is pretty awful. Much promised and nothing delivered. I’m well aware that that is what the book is supposed to be out – lots of drug taking and floppy cocks, but it’s all a bit too fucking boring for my liking. All the characters are vile and all their interactions are pointless so it’s really hard to wade through all the treacly prose of a literary male having a circle jerk with himself.

The married sex is the best – and I never thought I’d ever say that – but even then he makes it proper cringe. All small talk and back rubs. All bacon rashers for breakfast and flustered fussy fingering of orifices.

I was hoping that everyone would die in the end – for the best – but only one person did which was so fucking incredibly boring. Lots of the characters tried to commit suicide but failed. There’s something about such a hopeless load of raw untreated shit that feels incredibly lazy and arrogant – it’s not satire if it has nothing to say. Yes, we are all morons with mouths and arseholes but what’s your fucking point Martin, you old sod.

Overall conclusion: 1 out of 10.

Titillation station: Not in anyway even slightly sexy. Even the sex words that I know and love lost there kick and gnash. We are all dead. And just as one of the abysmal characters chimes, sex has become a mere bodily function like shitting. Hooray! Maybe satire can’t be sexy? Maybe satire has to be impotent?

Food for thought: There isn’t any. I don’t like food or thinking anymore.

A quick fact about Martin Amis: he acknowledged during an interview once that sex scenes in novels are always terrible. Dear, oh fucking dear! Maybe, how about, I’m just thinking, maybe, just maybe, have a go at writing a good sex scene then Martin you lazy fucking cunt. Presuming you’ve had one. Or can imagine a good one. Because that’s supposed to be your fucking purpose right – imagining things that us vacant cretins might learn something from.

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Violet Malice

Suck It and See