Review: Intelligent Erotic Fiction . . . for a change
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 31, 2013
Elle follows the personal journey and sexual awakening of Gabrielle Archer from a woman who thinks she knows herself, into Elle, a woman who truly does. The journey is precipitated by her meeting Simon Bishop, a man so confident and self-possessed that he immediately has her challenging her long-held assumptions about who she is and wants to be. The beauty of this book is that you're challenged right along with her. I cannot recommend it highly enough for readers of intelligent erotic fiction.Every once in awhile you run across a new author who pisses you off. Not because their work frustrates you, or their writing doesn't come up to par, but quite the opposite - it's because they are so damned good (excuse me, but I had to use that word for emphasis) that you feel cheated for having not read their work before. And you feel even more cheated when you realize they've been out there all along and no one told you! The Black is one such writer for me. I started reading Elle(Insatiable Book One) as I was finishing another book (never do that, it dilutes your enjoyment of both books) and so my attention was divided. But when I was able to truly dedicate my attention to this book, I was hooked and could not let go.First I should say that I was intrigued to read this not only because The Black and I have met in the virtual world, but because the male voice in books is something that I like to study. Few men in my opinion write women well. And occasionally, the women they write are so incredibly one-dimensional you want to stage a book-burning in protest. None of that here. Among the many, many things I liked about Elle was the pitch-perfect female voice. I knew he understood women when the author had Gabrielle, the main protagonist go home after an encounter with Simon and check herself out in her full-length mirror, trying on a pair of shoes to find one more appropriate for her outfit just because he commented that her choice was a poor one. If that doesn't capture how the female psyche works, I don't know what does - the ways that self-doubt can rear it's ugly head when an attractive man makes a comment that is marginally critical . . .And that was just the beginning. I also liked how he portrayed an organic and natural evolution of a D/s relationship and one that doesn't exist only in a fictional "playroom" where whips and chains and complicated apparatus are displayed for dramatic effect. He convincingly illustrated how the paradox of a submissive is that they are generally people who are very much in control of all other aspects of their lives, unlike the fictional subs in Fifty Shades and similar novels where subs are weak of will, innocent and in all aspects of their lives very much subjected to the whims of others. Not so in real D/s relationships, so this author clearly did some actual research or knows from whence he speaks!And then there were the incredibly bold plot choices. I liked almost more than anything that this author chose a counter-intuitive resolution to this story; one which challenges the norm of novels centered around relationships (I can't call this a romance because that label is too limiting). The ending, which intriguingly leaves room for more, challenged the norm of relationship narratives just as Gabrielle and Simon's relationship challenges social norms. Brilliantly done.I said I liked that almost more than anything because more than anything, I liked, no loved that this author knows his way around the English language, how to play with words to create mood, how to create a strong sense of place and of emotion and even of time. I give this book five stars even though there were places where as a fellow writer, I thought I could detect a little fatigue in his prose(like he wrote it late at night, or when he was exhausted with his characters, or just wanted to move the plot along). This is still a five-star read because when it was good, it was effing genius. Here are a couple of my favorites:Describing Gabrielle's reaction upon facing Simon's, er, manhood: "It was just mindless blood-filled muscle, a dark brown organ with a drop of pre-cum glistening at it's tip. But it beckoned Gabrielle in its rigid silence, called out to her, demanded from her. Its command to her was distinctly clear as had been Simon unzipping his pants. Gabrielle opened her mouth and gave it what it wanted." Powerful stuff, and not that dumbed-down, raunchy ridiculousness that passes as erotica these days where there's lots of humping and naughty words that make schoolgirls twitter behind their hands.Elle is real, grown-folks writing.I like this excerpt because here, as he does in many more places in the book,he demonstrates that as a writer he knows when to leave your prose alone, let it remain uncluttered and clear: "She felt pure: raw, primal. She was high-on the wine and on the purity of the moment as she walked naked through the night."You have no idea how tempting it is as a writer to use adjectives and lots of them; either that or hackneyed similes like "She moved like a panther", crap like that which I sometimes do when I'm lazy. The Black's resistance to that kind of language made me want to print some pages, grab my highlighter and post them on my fridge as a reminder of how it's done. Yeah, it's that deep for me.I also liked that the chapters were short bites - snippets of scenes that had the effect of giving us key moments in the time as the transformation of the female protagonist from Gabrielle, ball-busting woman-in-control-of-her-universe to Elle, woman-untethered-by-convention unfolds. By the time you get to the end, she is a very different person than the woman you met in chapter one.And that I think was what made me love this book most of all, the very vivid, visual and wholly convincing transformation of a character. This was not a technically perfect book, few indie-published books are, but my satisfaction upon reading it was absolutely complete.If you want to be turned on, it'll do that but not just physically. For me the turn-on was intellectual as well. How does this happen? That a woman in control of her life decides to surrender and give over her control to another? This writer convinced me in a way that has never been adequately expressed for me before that the surrender itself is a type of freedom.Books that challenge the way you look at people, relationships and the world; books that make you think. That's my turn-on. If you're the same way, read this one.