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The Raunch Review: Book 28

I just had the old helium balloon treatment. It was that time of year again: my birthday. Poppers (of the party variety) were pulled. Fluorescent fizzy drinks and icecream dribbled down throats and filled up bellies, right to the top. Some people thought I was older than it says on my records, which I took as a compliment. Age is a good thing after all. Everything  tastes better with age, including my third runway and the small strip of bacon between the brown wire and the pink switch. Nobody blew me (my candles out), or crowned my wobbly jelly with squirty squirt squirt cream, so overall it could have been better. 

Violet’s weekly (give or take) adult book review looks at another hunk of steaming meat and it’s an oozing pyramid of hot fluids. The aim, as always, is to attempt to answer that stuffed crust framed question: can a good book ever be as buoyant as a good fuck?

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Book title: Wetlands
Author: Charlotte Roche
Translator: Tim Mohr
Publisher of this edition: Fourth Estate
Copyright: © Charlotte Roche 2008
First published: 2008
Cover photo: ballyscanlon / Getty Images

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: Helen is in hospital having arse surgery (haemorrhoids) and she is just 18 years old. So, the question on everyone’s lips (top lips): is what the hell has she been doing with her arse? Well, you are about to find out. The book goes into intricate details on exactly what she has been doing down there, and needless to say she’s been pretty rough with it. In the meantime, she is trying to get her parents back together by being in the hospital as long as possible, which involves her gouging her own wounded rectum by sitting on the metal brake attached to the wheels of her hospital bed. 

Title: Wetlands are distinct ecosystems that are saturated with water. Helen is obsessed with bodily fluids, particularly discharge from her vagina. She is always daubing fluids everywhere, this includes wiping her slit and crack all over toilet seats, and leaving homemade tampons in unusual places where people will find them.  I reckon that this is the link to the title, as the term is not used at all during the book. I kept my eye out for it.  

Cover image: Half an avocado, length ways. A nice view of the stone. Helen grows avocados, which is pretty difficult. The stone needs to be treated in a particular way to get it to sprout (I’m an expert, having sprouted over 50 of my own avo stones for pleasure). The stones actually go very slimy before they germinate. Obviously, Helen puts them up her cunt. She’s been sterilized, so she treats these avocado stones like her babies. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

The thought of anal incontinence worries me. 

I’ve experimented with long periods of not washing my pussy. 

For me, the smell of plain old shit or piss is better than the disgusting perfumes people buy. 

I dip my finger into my pussy and dab a little slime behind my earlobes. 

Like another thing I get a kick out of: when I’m alone in the bathtub and I have to fart, I try to get the air bubbles to glide up between my pussy lips. 

I root round like a squirrel down there, and just as I’m falling asleep I have the impression there’s a log of crap poking out of my ass. 

I’m appalled at my own asshole – or rather, what’s left of it. 

I really like to smell and eat my smegma. 

Sometimes it’s like cottage cheese, other times like olive oil, depending on how long it’s been since I washed. 

I’d love to eat a pizza with sperm from five different guys on it. 

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Overall sexual content: There are some hot bits. There’s a bit where she describes masturbating, which is erotic. But sadly most of the sex stuff is more funny or grotesque than sexy. I mean, she uses the word slime to describe pussy juice, which is pretty hideous. 

Helen visits this fella who shaves her. It has the potential to be titillating. But it’s just not. Possibly because the central character is so strange. She takes great pleasure in doing stuff that most people would never want to do, even within the realms of fetish. For example, she eats someone’s sick because it has undigested drugs in it and feeds her own tears to this nurse she fancies by carefully pouring them into individual grapes that she has stuffed with a cashew nut. What the fuck, as they say??

Overall conclusion: 2 out of 10.

Titillation station: It’s not sexy. It’s fucking boring, really. When someone just spews out the most extreme thing they can think of to get a reaction,  it quickly gets pretty mundane. The whole way through it just feels like the author is trying to win the Guinness World Record for the most shocking/obscene/disgusting book and that makes it insincere and farcical. What happens is that nothing feels authentic or relatable. It is all an exercise in fake tits and teeth. I suppose it could be a parody or something, of the modern young woman, but if it is then there’s no pay off. 

Food for thought: This book is a tough one for me. It’s explicit, big tick. But, the problem is that it is gratuitous.  

It’s so easy to be gross. I can think of a million horrible things, but what’s the point. Especially when we are all so unshockable now, why not try something genuine? However boring that might be, it would be less boring than this horse shit. 

People are massive on avocados. Smashed. Sliced. Creamed. All smoothied up. The cover alone probably got all those avocado-on-toast people going. 

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The Raunch Review: Book 26

Missed me? Yeah, right. I’ve been waiting for you to notice my absence, that’s why I’ve not been about for a while. Thought I’d toy with your feelings. Watch you. Partake in a little voyeurism. See whether, you know, one day, you might miss me. Feel a hole somewhere between your legs. I caved in the end. Couldn’t be bothered to wait any longer. It’s obvious that you couldn’t care less and that’s understandable. I completely understand. You have a lot going on. Who’s going to eat all that pasta and polish all those horse brasses. Both my legs went dead at week two in hiding, but I’ll spare you the details. 

The world doesn’t seem to have got any sexier in my absence. I think maybe it might have become smaller and more tense. More fucKING shaped – the stamps anyway. (I’m still looking for a 50p with his majesty’s boat face on it so I can shove it up my bear’s arse.) Summer is almost on top of us. We all remember what that feels like: thighs and lollypops. Fingering food. Squinting. Water sports. Thrush. 

So, here she blows! Violet’s weekly adult book review is back and it’s a pretty rough pile of horse shit that went down like cold treacle. A hard slap of voyeurism. The aim, as always, is to attempt to answer that succulent question: can a good book ever be as raw-chicken-like as a good fuck?

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Book title: The Voyeur’s Motel
Author: Gay Talese
Publisher of this edition: Grove Press UK
Copyright: © Gay Talese 2016
First published: 2016
Cover photo: Brooklyn Underground Films

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: Supposedly a true story, journalist Gay Talese was contacted by self-proclaimed voyeur and motel owner Gerald Foos about his experiences as a rogue sex researcher. Foos claimed to have bought the Manor House Motel just outside Denver and installed viewing platforms in order to observe the motel’s guests having it off (sex and all that). He kept detailed records of what he observed, a pen in one hand and his engorged penis in the other.

Title: A voyeur who owns a motel. What could possibly go wrong? The question is if they don’t know they’re being watched, and nothing ever comes of it (like no one posts footage on the internet or uses the information to extort money from anyone), does that make it alright? Are privacy and perversion at odds or can they be fully satisfied bedfellows? Most people in hotels end up masturbating to the sex soundtrack accompanying what’s going on in the hotel room next door anyway, right? Then, eyeballing the perpetrators over the croissants in the restaurant the next morning. They never look how you imagined them from their grunting sounds. 

Cover image: A photo of the classic US looking motel where the action supposedly took place. Humble and unassuming, exactly the sort of place for sordid activities and voyeurism. Hot sheets for hot pockets – you know – look sheepish, pay, just fuck, don’t even stay the night. Janet Leigh wrapped in a shower curtain. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

Finally after kissing and fondling her, he quickly gained an erection and entered her in the male superior position, with little or no foreplay, and orgasmed in approximately 5 minutes.

The next morning at 9 a.m., I observed her giving him oral sex to completion, with the sperm running down her cheek.

For a while they all three laid quiet on the bed and relaxed, discussing vacuum cleaner sales.

Unfortunately, the majority of men I’ve observed are concerned with their own pleasure rather than the women’s.

The wife proceeded to unhook his catheter and masturbate him to erection.

The male subject then withdrew his mouth and fingers and said, “I’m having difficulty making my car payment.”

Immediately he grabs her drink and takes his penis out of his pants and urinates in her drink.

Her hair is messed up and she has been releasing gas at random and without shame.

After observing many subjects, my survey concludes that women have a tendency to masturbate more out of depression than anything else.

The voyeur observed one man, a married rather of two, having sex with one of the many teddy bears he had brought into his room.

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Overall sexual content: The book is supposed to be an actual account of what this peeping tom saw his hotel guests doing, so it reads very dry. Sometimes they pick their nose and wipe it on the sheets. Sometimes they piss in the sink. All in a days gawping for the voyeurism expert. He also makes lots of conclusion about what he’s seen over the years, which is pretty fucking repulsive. 

It’s not sexy. Just like a book on the anatomy of a big bellend is not sexy. There’s lots of descriptions of sexual activities and how they have changed over the years, but I’m not sure how much we should value the opinion of some festering hotelier who wanks through an air vent whilst writing down an account of what he’s seeing. He gets so desperate one time when a hot couple start having it off and then turn the lights out that he gets into his car and parks it by their window and turns the headlights to full beam so that he can see them doing the old in-and-out. Voyeurism at full throttle. He’s an unreliable perv without any redeeming features or self-awareness that’s what I’m getting at. 

Overall conclusion: 3 out of 10.

Titillation station: Although it’s supposed to be based on true events, I really think it might be a sack of shit. Some guy’s fantasy or at least some guy’s need for attention. Owning a motel and watching people. It’s a cold fish. Detached and gobbling for less of what’s in its mouth. Maybe that’s how the voyeur feels – lonely and isolated. Both part and apart from the actual action. Something that becomes an obsession. He can’t live without watching, without the thrill that voyeurism invokes. He sees a murder and keeps wanking off – lots of it just doesn’t ring true. 

Food for thought: His conclusion that women only masturbate when they are depressed is a pretty fucking big generalisation. It made me momentarily throw the book into a quarry and set it on fire. This guy is not the Office for National Statistics even though he thinks he is. He thinks that he can explain why and what is happening. That he understands desire. What a fucking idiot. It would be great for him if women only masturbated when they’re depressed. If the sexual desire of women is based on lack and loneliness. That they only do it because they are desperate, a man isn’t around, after they’ve cried themselves to sleep. How fucking boring. 

Needless to say I’m glad he didn’t get to watch me wank all over his curtains. 

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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 24

Greetings from the middle of February.  Are you ready for a thriller?

I have been swelling. Like a jaundice Soufflé aux épinards. I looked in the mirror one rusty morning and was pretty bowled over. I had grown at least two feet and still had the remnants of the night before on my face. I had juiced a man’s prostate. He had a lot in the trap, if you catch my drift. I suspect he hadn’t let the pigeons out in a while. They were all breaking their necks to get into the fresh air. It’s nice to feel close to someone sometimes. Like right up in their mechanism. Anyway, Violet’s weekly adult book review has dropped and it’s a hard-boiled bollock of a thriller. The aim, as always, is to attempt to answer that pregnant question: can a good book ever be as brain-dead as a good fuck?

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Book title: In The Cut
Author: Susanna Moore
Publisher of this edition: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Copyright: © Susanna Moore 1995
First published: 1995
Cover image: Emilio Brizzi / Millennium Images, UK

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis:  In The Cut is a gut wrenching thriller, which follows the comings and goings, and inner workings, of an English teacher at New York University who becomes sexually involved with a policeman investigating the brutal murders of a number of women in the area. 

Title: This one has multiple levels of meaning. The murders all involve women being butchered with blades. Our narrator, Frannie, is also studying New York street slang, which unsurprisingly is very derogatory in nature.  Being ‘in the cut’ is used by several characters to mean ‘in the vagina’.  

Cover image: A close-up of a side profile looking backwards. It is a loaded look, make-up laden and sexual, vulnerable and yet defiant. Certainly, women in this book are being hunted and brutalised. They are the target of hatred even though they don’t necessarily realise it yet. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

“My dick’s so sweet, it’ll give you cavities.”

The cunt was fucking everything that walked. 

I, who refused for years to let my husband in Paris realize his life’s ambition of photographing a scorpion in my vagina. 

“You know, all you really need is two tits, a hole and a heartbeat.”

He doesn’t talk about sex the way some men do, wanting to go over it, wanting to hear the woman describe what it was like, how she hadn’t been able to wipe herself for a week. 

“I loved her so much I used to eat her every night.”

She had a meaty, fat pussy. 

He turned me around and bent me over the desk, yanking my skirt around my waist, and pulled aside my underpants and pushed his fingers, fingers, all his fingers inside me. 

“The only way I could tell he’d come was that he’d look at his watch.”

I was suddenly ashamed, ashamed that there would be an odor, or that his cock would have shit on it, and I could not look. 

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Overall sexual content: The book is full of sex. It is a thriller in more ways than one. Raw, stinking and writhing about the page on the knife edge between lust and hate. It is not an erotic book for me – in the sense that the brutality and general malice that accompanies all the sexual scenarios dribbles through and makes the sex repulsive. Sex is made into something dangerous and frightening, something violent and isolating. It is clap cold, like a body on a slab. 

Aside from the undercurrent of violence that permeates this thriller and annihilates the majority of the titillating aspects, the sex is fantastically well drawn. It feels authentic and desperate and real. Who said that erotica has to encourage positive sexual feelings? Maybe it can make us shrivel up and dry.  

Overall conclusion: 10 out of 10!!!!

Titillation station: It is titillating to a very small degree. The sexual passages are detailed and arousing. That is part of its power. Sex has got a lot to do with the power dynamic, whichever way you position it. And the feelings we have about sex are complex and hard to comprehend. 

Food for thought: It is one of the best books ever written, in my puffed up opinion. It captures something important, something that exists and walks around with us. The female characters are also flawed. The narrator suspects that the policeman she is fucking is a bad man, but she keeps having it off with him anyway. It paints female sexual desire on the page in a brash and real way, as present and obvious. Over the top of that is daubed the aggressive and predatory sexual desire of the male characters, who hold powerful positions in society that are supposed to protect us. The policeman’s hat and the policeman’s badge. His hand cuffs and his arrest warrants. Particularly, it illustrates the use of sex as a weapon and the culture amongst men that can dehumanise the object of their desires. Maybe because they have become too responsible for their own lives. 

Nobody can ignore when reading this book – and probably why it was reissued in 2021 – the parallels with the real culture of misogyny in the police force. The devastating atrocities that have happened in recent memory in full view. The way women are described and the way sex is achieved in this book is pumped full of disgust and one-upMANship. 

I won’t ruin the end. Or tell you how it turns out. Except that it is devastating and close to the nerve to acknowledge that a policeman cutting women’s nipples off and eventually using them as chum, and that person being very confident that he will get away with it, is not shocking and it should be. 

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The Raunch Review: Book 18

Violet Malice has been hedging her bets by rubbing her balls with sandpaper and/or sweetened saliva. You can easily get your hands on some of the sweet stuff by eating loads of meringue nests and then decanting your spit into an old milk bottle. Under Law 41 of the Laws of Cricket, the ball can be polished without the use of an artificial substance, or towel dried if wet. In the event that it gets covered in shit, the ball has to be cleaned under strict supervision. Throw some balls at Violet’s crease, she likes that. She’s tampered with a few leathery ones in her time. Anyway, let’s crack on. Time is money after all (or that’s what all the pinstriped pigs want us to believe). Violet’s weekly adult book review attempts to answer that interhuman question: can a good book ever be as blindingly dystopian as a good fuck?

Book title: Now The Night Begins
Author: Alain Guiraudie
Translator: Jeffrey Zuckerman
Publisher of this edition: Semiotext(e)
Copyright: © Semiotext(e) 2018
Translation copyright: © Jeffrey Zuckerman
First published: 2014
Cover art: Paul Klee

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: The book tracks the comings and goings of a strange sexual relationship between a 90-year old patriarch (who is known as Grampa in the book) and a 40-year old family friend called Gilles. The book begins with Gilles stealing Grampa’s underwear off the washing line and masturbating into them in front of Grampa and his daughter who are dozing on the sofa. The daughter calls the police about the stolen underpants (as it’s happened three or four times now and she’s getting well pissed) and so Gilles hangs them back on the line full of cum. The police then go on a horrifying rampage when they discover the culprit. Gilles then begins a fiery sexual relationship with the police chief, who he witnesses murder another man. So pretty spicy dystopian stuff!

Title: A pretty boring title given the content of the book, which is hardcore to put it mildly. If it was mustard it would be eye-wateringly English. The blandness of the title is funny, like calling a perverse dystopian sex book Cupcakes and U-Bends or One Pretty Foggy Evening in June. I reckon Alain was having a laugh with the title. Gilles does end up going to visit Grampa at night because of the police presence and obviously ‘night’ and ‘darkness’ have connotations of suffering and the loss of humanity. 

Cover image: A nice bit of cubist surrealism by Paul Klee. Very shifty and in keeping with the impending darkness that surrounds the image. This work is called Fire at Full Moon and was completed by Klee in 1933. It certainly entices us into the dystopian world under the covers. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

I’m so turned on that in no time I’m spurting in Grampa’s underwear. 

“It looks like ejaculate,” says the chief. 

Then I see his balls dripping with shit. 

I shake my head to rid myself of this shit rag, I can’t hear anything anymore, I struggle and wait until someone shoots me in the head.

After all, yes, I’m pretty sure this little bout of masturbating in her father’s underwear hasn’t made her happy. 

I feel like he might bite off my dick with his teeth. 

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Overall sexual content: Lots of very interesting sexiness. The chemistry between Grampa and Gilles is really interesting and challenging, particularly given society’s aversion to sexualising older people. This book is exciting in that it opens up a whole host of other types of sexual relationships that do not fit the rules, which go way beyond the simple ins and outs of body bits. 

The sex is hot and there’s lots and lots of it. The dystopian feel to the book with its ultra-violence and its strange drives, gives a desperation to the sex and a kind of horror. Gilles ends up falling in love with the police chief who forced a baton up his arse in the opening pages, but despite the mutual attraction their intimacy is tainted by Gilles’ growing fear that the chief will kill him in the end.

Overall conclusion: 8 out of 10.

Titillation station: Horny badger in a dark dark forrest that is feeling around for some warm flesh to sigh into. That said you can’t really let yourself go when there’s all that mass horror swirling around the pages, so this one might be more for the specialist wanker. 

Food for thought: An absolutely fantastic book, which has obviously received a lot of bad press given the challenging subject matter. Some critics/idiots have called it deeply offensive, which I can’t get my head around at all. It seems people really don’t like thinking about 90-year olds having any sort of feelings left. Given that Gramps is well up for it (although we’re never really sure what it is) then it’s hardly an abusive situation. And the whole point anyway is that neither of them actually want to have sex with each other, but there is this powerful desire between them that drives them both to want to lay in bed together naked talking in a dialect (Occitan) that only they share. 

The murder never gets solved and we never find out what the police chief is really playing at – whether his relationship with Gilles is some strange trap or whether he genuinely loves him. The characters are all exploding and bloated with unsaid and unanswered questions much like life. Thrashing around with shackles biting into our ankles. 

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