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Kathe Lette |
Bedtime reading from Pom Pom, Storm and Minxy
Some of our top female novelists have, anonymously, contributed to a
‘sizzling’ book to lift us from the unsexy economic gloom, writes Gerald Isaaman
In Bed With: Unashamedly Sexy Stories
By Your Favourite Women Novelists. Edited by Jessica Adams, Maggie Alderson, Imogen Edwards-Jones and Kathy Lette Sphere £7.99
IF it is sex, money and ideas that make the world go round, then there is a distinct lack of loot at the moment, not to mention ideas for solving the catastrophic economic downturn. So no doubt sex is enjoying a boom, with more people seeking love and solace to ease their troubles.
Essentially, there seems nothing wrong with having a bit of fun – and a thrill or two – if you ignore any kind of moral guidance, patently lacking in this blasphemous century, either from religion or parents or the government of the day, who weren’t exactly elected to control our natural urges.
And procreation (what’s the point of that if the world is already bursting and civilisation may expire in global catastrophe?) has long gone out of fashion.
So forget all the sermons for the moment and dip into this seriously sexy book, itself perhaps a significant benchmark of decadence, which presents 20 so-called “sizzling short stories” to take your mind off your troubles.
The marketing trick is that they are all written by noted female novelists, among them such well-known local names as Kathe Lette, Emma Freud, Fay Weldon, plus Santa Montefiore, Justine Picardie and Chocolat favourite, Joanne Harris, who have hidden their identities behind silly pseudonyms.
Is it worth studying the various styles – and the penchants for particular kinds of erotic behaviour – to tease out exactly who wrote which stories? Not really when they have given themselves such audacious names as Storm Henley, Minxy Malone, Cat Devonshire and Pom Pom Paradise.
They range from the awful – “She felt like Edmund Hillary, planting his flag on Everest, as she put her hand on Mark’s shoulder”, to “She felt like some ancient ruin, her body a historic monument of abandoned, unremembered nooks and crannies…”
That comes from the best
story in the book, called Just Lie Back and Think of England, which undoubtedly takes the crown for finesse and surprise.
Next time you either meet one of the writers or read one of their books, it will provide an ideal opportunity to try to discover who was so unashamedly hot in – and out of – bed with men they have obviously fantasised about meeting, in bath, shower, distant hotel room, farmyard barn or royal palace.
Some of the stories you might regard as provocatively banal with titles such as The Peacock or coyly cool, like The Come On. Yet, amazingly, the ladies reveal especially how they have, at least fictionally, been hungrily looking and lusting for muscle men in an outdoors arena, which seems to be one specific exotic turn-on. And that’s apart from stories set in romantic Roma, sophisticated Paris and singing Canary Wharf.
There’s even another woman waiting decades to fulfil stifled demands for a sublime moment in church enjoying the man of her dreams, who happens to have the outlandish name of some prurient ancient knight, Mark le Broyeux, minus any armour.
Another of the anonymous authors is Emma Darwin. No doubt her great, great-grandfather Charles would have learned much about the origin of the human species – and the sexy subtleties of natural selection – if these fascinating amorous antics had been on such blatant display in his heyday.
For today’s barefaced and bare-bottomed boys and girls there are no blushes at all – just enjoyable stimulation and satisfaction in our over-sexed, drug and alcohol-fuelled decadent times, alas. |
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