What
a joy finally to have this outstanding short story collection available in
e-book form after what seems far too long a wait. And though that wait was, in
point of fact, only slightly less than a year, it was assuredly worth it in any case. Jeremy
Edwards’ erotic fiction is, as ever, sunlit and cerebral, stylish, sensual and
smart, light as air and heavy as thought. Oh, and did I mention funny? Mustn’t
forget the funny; can’t, in fact, forget it after the two or three times I
nearly passed out from laughing so hard.
Edwards
is clearly in love with language—undoubtedly a good thing for a writer—fetishizing
the idiosyncrasies of words the way almost all his characters seem to fixate on
women’s panties. He likes to toy with connotation; test the supple bounds of
metaphor and innuendo, engage in gentle, nerdish foreplay with his phrases,
sentences, and paragraphs, feel them growing, changing, metamorphosing under
his promiscuously practiced hands, making love to them, calling new, ever-more
pleasantly surprising ideas and images into existence.
[She] wanted it both ways; she
wanted the intense dark-chocolate rush of secret satisfactions; and she wanted
the frothy strawberry milkshake of showing off—and even, perhaps, the caramel
drizzle of being discovered. If she could have stood bare-assed in front of a
gallery of the regular customers, with Paul pumping her pussy, and magically
contrived things so the crowd was at
once oblivious to and acutely cognizant of the naked immediacy of her penetration
. . . well, she would have done so faster than you could say ‘Pop’s not in’ to
a bill collector.
Edwards’
characters are invariably agreeable, thoughtful, introspective,
enthusiastically willing, and astonishingly articulate where discussions of
process are concerned; especially discussions of process occurring during the sex act itself. Look! Nerds
want pretty much the same thing as everybody else. It’s just that sometimes we
like to talk about the things that excite or frighten or turn us on in greater
detail than the average moan or grunt can convey.
She was always using words that I
found too beautiful to say aloud, words that I was afraid I wasn’t handsome
enough to use. It was as if she could reach in and pluck all the finest nuggets
from my passive vocabulary.
Or
this:
I think identity is a lot like
hit-or-miss photography. We keep taking pictures of ourselves, in different
outfits and lightings and contexts, hoping for a likeness that resonates . . .
and, of course, the actual person is infinitely kinetic and complex, and can
never quite be captured as a concept, even by himself. And, at 18, I don’t know
how to begin defining myself through something more personalized than homework
or riffs.
Edwards
is a master of erotic metaphor:
She opted to cut, flipping over and
sliding her thighs apart like two glistening chunks of plastic-coated playing
cards—revealing an ace.
Wise
enough to employ it sparingly, the author demonstrates that he is one of the
few contemporary eroticists talented enough to make second-person point-of-view seem
interesting for more than a few paragraphs:
The lingering smell of your juice
has now aroused me to the point of wildness. My nose presses lewdly into the
joy-stained sheet, and I let my entire consciousness sink with it into
olfactory paradise. I feel as if my very mind is between your thighs, my
thoughts nestled within your pussy lips. I realize that when we fuck I am so
focused on the sight of you, the sound you make, and the sensations of touching
and being touched by you, that the powerful olfactory element must sometimes
compete for my attention. Now the smell of this morning’s wet pussy is
everything to me—it is the key that unlocks every sexual door in my head.
The
mood throughout these stories is immutably positive, like a two-hour concert
of chamber music played entirely in a sunny C-major; rich in delights to be
sure, and yet, over time the mind needs some variety to stay focused. I kept
wishing for some contrast, perhaps a mild disagreement in A-minor, an argument
in some darker, more remote key, or even once, just once, a good cacophonically atonal knock-down-drag-out
fight; any sort of realistic conflict that might reflect
the way most human beings interact, finding themselves thrown together or, in
spite of all their best efforts, inexorably alienated. In the absence of
conflict, most of these stories convey a kind of wry detachment, rather like
the protracted musings of some highly articulate smartass—a smartass with an
abiding derrière fetish, and an obsession for panties as colorful and varied as
the fruit flavors at Baskin-Robins’. Not that any of this is a bad thing,
though, perhaps, the collection ought best be taken in smaller doses. (Admittedly,
in reading it for review, I had to proceed non-stop under deadline from
beginning to end; it would have been considerably more enjoyable to “dip in” to
the contents here and there at leisure—though the publisher’s failure to
include a working table of contents makes that virtually impossible.)
Indeed, the biggest nits I have to pick are with the publisher, rather than the author. Oh, how I wish publishers would bother to learn the unique ins and outs of e-book formatting and internal linking. What makes an e-book different from a “traditional” print publication after all? The ability to provide internal navigation and external referencing through hyperlinking is a true boon, and there is simply no excuse in this day and age not to have a clickable table of contents, especially in so extensive a collection. Additionally, there need to be definite page breaks after each story, if for no other reason than to facilitate accurate bookmarking (it’s not like one’s wasting paper, after all).
Complaints
aside, this is one of the best single-author collections of short erotic fiction
to appear in quite some time; unfailingly droll, intelligently adroit,
effervescent, stimulatingly abundant, and consistently, happily surprising.
Enthusiastically recommended!
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