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. 

Make sure you sign-up to Violet’s mailing list HERE. And buy Violet’s chapbook if you can: she’s on her knees HERE. 

 

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. 

Don’t miss out – sign up to V’s mailing list here: CLICK ME!

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. 

Make sure you sign-up to Violet’s mailing list HERE. And buy Violet’s chapbook if you can as she is on her knees HERE. 

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. 

Push it – sign up to V’s mailing list: https://eepurl.com/hTKdsr

Violet Malice

Suck It and See