The Raunch Review: Hot Book Review 3

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?

Darling by Harriet Daimler
Darling by Harriet Daimler

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

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