Love

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The Raunch Review: Book 23

You’ll never guess what…

I went to the snooker final. I am a big fan of ball sports that involve dickie bows and waistcoats. It really gives me the horn, all that bending over the table. All that chalking the tip. All that synthetic resin dropping like batter into hot oil. It was pretty mouth-watering. I didn’t want it to end. But, alas, as the saying goes, everything must come at the end. Otherwise no one’s allowed to finish. Violet’s weekly adult book review is streaking into 2023. A whole new year of reading. All bouncy, pink and vulnerable. As we attempt to answer that inflatable question: can a good book ever be as buoyant as a good fuck?

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Book title: Available: A Memoir of Sex and Dating After a Marriage Ends 
Author: Laura Friedman Williams
Publisher of this edition: The Borough Press, HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright: © Laura Friedman Williams 2021
First published: 2021
Cover art: plainpicture/amanaimages/LUSH LIFE/A.collection

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis:  This is a very personal account of a woman’s plunge into sex and dating after her 22-year marriage ends. Laura, a 47-year-old mother of three, dishes the dirt on what it’s like to put an unfamiliar prick in your arse after two decades of nothing fucking. How to pluck your bean up out of the gutter and try to form some sort of identity out of the ruins. 

Title: I am AVAILABLE. A pretty horrifying statement after a lifetime of putting other people’s needs before your own. To be consumed by Mother and Wife. What a pair of cunts. What a horrifying thought, to be available. A pint of single cream sat in the fridge counter waiting to be wanted. 

Cover image: A lovely looking peach with an erotic looking crease. How delicious. Fruit is sexy, we all know that. My only beef is that maybe the crease is too straight. It makes me think that this might be a genetically modified stoned fruit. No one has a perfectly straight furry arse crevice. Not that I’ve cum across anyway (and I’ve had my fair share of A2M, according to the UK government’s National Statistics). 

Best sentence/s in the book:

I have always gagged giving blow jobs. 

More importantly, two men have now independently surveyed the state of my vagina and given it the all-clear. 

There is something that makes a man look so vulnerable when he is handling himself […]. 

I am too shy to do what I really want, which is to tell him this is my first close-up with an uncircumcised penis, and to more closely examine it, so I settle for another round of sex and then agree we can go eat dinner. 

I am scared to say no to this man – he is intense and determined, and I fear that I might have led him to this inevitable conclusion so that saying no now would brand me a tease, a blue-baller, a naïf, someone who doesn’t understand the sexual dynamics between a man and a woman. 

“Can I have you one more time before you go?”

When his finger slides inside me, my eyes dart to the side where a large group of millennials is gathered next to us. 

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Overall sexual content: I mean it’s a bit of a curve ball, it’s actually autobiographical and as such not a balls out dirty book. The writer is navigating her reawakening as a single sexual being, so there is a focus on sex, the ins and outs, and navigating the rough seas of expectation. It’s not exactly titillating, but there is an erotic aspect to the very intimate account of someone tiptoeing into the bedroom after their whole life has been dissolved by lies. Someone that is being very honest about what they see in front of them – genital warts and all – and the internal battles they are fighting. 

There is lots of detail about the sex being served up and this new frontier. I would say that it is hard to be all fired up like a wood burner when someone is being so personal about their hang-ups and surprised at how much dick someone has got.  That’s a bit of a mood killer for the one-handed reader. 

Overall conclusion: 6 out of 10.

Titillation station: It would be unfair of me to say that I thought this was erotica. It’s not. But it is taking on the erotic nevertheless. I think this is a warm load of reading that hopes to empower people and in this instance that is a much more valuable proposition than a masturbatory back-flip. 

Food for thought: It is a page-turner indeed and I did enjoy the ease in which Laura weaves her story. I think these sorts of personal books about sex are important to help people navigate the peaks and troughs of life, and find hope where seemingly there is none. 

The jarring aspect for me was the sharp self-doubt about the aging female body. It is understandable that a woman that has never explored her sexuality outside of her fucking boring marriage would be unsure of how desirable she is in the brave new Tinder filled world. But I didn’t like the fact that Laura had to be constantly reassured about the state of her tits and her fanny by a host of gym-addicted dicks on sticks. I was disappointed that she needed that reassurance even after she has blazed her own sexy path through the low hanging fruits of the forest.

I think that if women internalise a dislike for their own aging bodies because they think that men won’t find them sexy, that’s a massive part of the problem. What is it with women and aging? Surely, it’s something to be celebrated. I think this book made me feel more conscious of my body as a commodity – as something that degrades and decays. Women need to be kind. The alternative is an expensive smile and tits with no give. 

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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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The Raunch Review: Book 15

Violet Malice has been trying not to bite her tongue off when she thinks about you at night with her legs open. Dwelling on the look in your eyes when she knows you’re lying about not fancying that woman that works in the pizza place with the nice trousers (I mean tits). The one who talks to you with her eyes. The polite bitterness on your tongue in the morning when you want the intruder in your bed to love you and then fuck right off. She has been sitting in aluminium soaked coffee shops, looking at the floor tiles and contemplating the uncontemplatable. If only there was a way to turn the hands back and live life again knowing what she knows now. This week’s work of art is a book weak at the knees because of a meat truck collapsed on the great straining organ. A chest cavity hot and slick with slow roasted sex organs. It is a magnificent slip into romance. Violet’s weekly adult book review – as always – attempts to answer that padded envelope of a question: can a good book ever be as narcissistic and self-absorbed as a good fuck?

Book title: A Sport And A Pastime
Author: James Salter
Publisher of this edition: Picador
Copyright: © James Salter 1967
First published: 1967
Cover image: John Stezaker

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: An anonymous male narrator tells the story of a love affair between a handsome American man and a young French girl. The narrator watches them obsessively – seemingly wanting to be him and be balls deep in her – describing and fantasising about their rather magnolia day-to-day activities (eating out in nice restaurants) and their frequent unbridled sexual activities (eating out on pussy and cock burgers). 

Title: A forgettable title really given that the book is considered a great American novel and received critical acclaim. The author should probably have gone with something more tangible like The College Drop-Out and The Cock Hungry Waitress or Sowing Wild Strawberries In Some Beautiful Wasteland. Given the intensity of the book – the title somewhat undermines the sentiment, which is obviously the point. Love and lust are just a sport and a pastime. What at first seems to be the best thing in the world, is actually a repeatable fantasy that explodes into nothingness as you move closer and closer together. It seems that as the fucking becomes more and more meaningful – lust and hunger transform into fear and the loss of self. 

Cover image: The book focuses on the love affair between the two characters to the exclusion of all else – so the cover image works well. A good snog in the dark. A snog one leans into. A snog where you suddenly lose your trousers and your dignity. It could be all of our faces on that cover. A kiss frozen in time that mixes two separate beings into one moving mass of limbs. 

Best sentence/s in the book:

She undoes his clothing and brings forth his prick, erect, pale as a heron in the dusk, both of them looking ahead at the road like any couple. 

His sperm swims slowly inside her, oozing out between her legs. 

Her cunt tastes sweet as fruit. 

He comes like a bull. 

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Overall sexual content: The book is beautiful. Like poetry. Full of poignant observations about the journey from lust to love and back again. The fear and failure that comes with falling in love. Poetry is perfect for this purpose as such enormous all-consuming feelings have evaded description since 1992. That’s what poetry and great literature are there for: to try and capture the total horse shit that is a life well lived. 

There is lots and lots of sensual sex. Slow and wordless. Like the Sunday morning sun creeping across the covers. It is a very erotic book. The rhythm and backdrop of winter in France makes for a dizzy randy romance. The restless energy of youth and beauty. The coffee in condensation adorned cafes and the decadence of being hungry and then eating. 

The dialogue between them is excruciating. He has bad French and she has bad English. They fumble along. Obsessed with each other’s bodies and how they feel inside each other. There is a very beautiful moment when they try to talk about anal, without actually naming it (because maybe naming it is too crass and might shatter the romance), and she asks whether it will hurt. He obviously says the equivalent of “No, up the arse is well pleasurable like eating semolina.” When eventually they do put it in the shit shute, it is breathtaking. 

I did want more. A lot more. There is certainly lots of sex and it is described beautifully, but the sex itself is drawn very quickly as if half-asleep. I wanted protracted descriptions of their fucking. I wanted more trash in the poetry to make my eyes water. Pin pricks and teeth marks. I wanted a clearer view of their pleasure. For me there was a few too many roses and not enough gut bacteria. Turn the knob up to incinerate – that’s the book I want to read. 

Overall conclusion: 8 out of 10.

Titillation station: A hot one handed read if you’re into a perfectly rounded turn of phrase and a plump glottal stop. A swell bit of writing porn. But not a head banger if you catch my drift. 

Food for thought: The narrator is a nicely drawn voyeur. How much of their romance is his imagination is debatable, I’d say most of it. He obviously fancies the pants off the French girl, but is unable to act on his desires. If you stunt a pipe usually the fluids find their way out of another hole. I reckon this guy has a pretty vivid wank bank. 

The French girl is described as poor, simple and working-class. She has bad breath and farts by accident. She is sexy and beautiful and insatiable. She does not fight against her love for him, but he fights against hers. He eventually gets killed in a motorcycle accident, so all ends well! She gets married and presumably has children because obviously that’s the only possible ending to a romance. The woman either pines away to nothing or she stays on the MOTHER fucking conveyor belt of privet hedged suburbia.   

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Violet Malice

Suck It and See