Review by Choice Review
Roach's descriptions of selected aspects of sexual physiology research are wry, irreverent, and humorous. Roach's scope is broad: she chronicles inventors' attempts to develop and demonstrate a mechanical penis and devices for women's masturbation; physicians' and scientists' studies of the clitoris, the penis, and orgasm; and researchers' examinations of the sexual and reproductive functioning of pigs, monkeys, and rats. However, because Roach (writer and book reviewer) chose to skim from the extant sexology research and scholarship various examples and instances that are odd (even inexplicable) or that have a significant "cringe factor," her book cannot claim to be a review of the historical or current research into the physiology of sexual functioning. Roach offers her book "as a tribute to the men and women who dared" (to study sexual physiology), but her emphasis on the esoteric trivializes vital, rigorous sexuality research and scholarship and those who labor on its behalf. Summing Up: Not recommended. P. Lefler Bluegrass Community & Technical College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Mary Roach investigates comprehensively the latest in sex research. IN her previous books, "Stiff" and a followup, "Spook," Mary Roach set out to make creepy topics (cadavers, the afterlife) fun. In "Bonk," she turns to sex, covering such territory as dried animal excreta used as vaginal "drying agents"; a rat's tail "lost" in a penis; and a man named William Harvey, patentholder for a rolling toastersize metal box outfitted with a motorized "resiliently pliable artificial penis." In short, she takes an entertaining topic and showcases its creepier side. And then she makes the creepy funny. Intended as much for amusement as for enlightenment, "Bonk" is Roach's foray into the world of sex research, mostly from Alfred Kinsey onward, but occasionally harking back to the ancient Greeks and medievals (equally unenlightened). Roach belongs to a particular strain of science writer; she's interested less in scientific subjects than in the ways scientists study their subjects less, in this case, in sex per se than in the laboratory dissection of sex. She delights in medical euphemism and scholarly jargon; you can hear her titter as she rolls out terms like "vaginal photoplethysmograph probe," "nocturnal penile tumescence monitoring" and "vaginocavernosus reflex." Writing about a 1950sera study of vaginal response in which female subjects copulated with a penis camera, Roach wants to know how exactly the "dildocamera" operated, who volunteered to make use of it in a laboratory setting and, above all, where the device is now. This is "as good as science gets," she writes, "a mildly outrageous, terrifically courageous, seemingly efficacious display of creative problemsolving, fueled by a bullheaded dedication to amassing facts and dispelling myths in a longneglected area of human physiology." In a similar spirit, there's the study on "labial traction as an instigator of female orgasm," conducted by a team of Colombian researchers in the mid1980s. Heli Alzate, a physician and professor of sexology, and Mari Ladi Londoño, a psychotherapist, mustered 16 prostitutes and 32 feminists into their lab, where they manually stimulated their vaginal walls. The results? More than threefourths of the prostitutes had an orgasm, compared with only one in eight feminists. While antifeminists will probably have a field day with these results, the intent wasn't to measure frigidity according to political stance, but to determine whether penile thrusting alone was an efficient way of inducing female orgasm. (It's not.) A bold, tenacious and insatiable reporter, Roach combs through journal articles and books with lurid titles like "Urological Oddities," "Vacuum Cleaner Use in Autoerotic Death" and "Curious Experiences With the Genital Organs of the Male," a 1909 paper written by the resident obstetrician to a Turkish harem. She visits a Danish pig farm to observe a FivePoint Stimulation Plan intended to enhance sow pleasure during artificial insemination and observes Dr. GengLong Hsu, director of the Microsurgical Potency Reconstruction and Research Center in Taipei, at work in his operating room. Though the book has its share of alarming factoids care to testdrive a "syngina," anyone? the scene over which Dr. Hsu presides is outandout harrowing. (Sensitive male readers may wish to stop reading here.) Roach smalltalks with the good doctor as he digs in with a scalpel to perform something called the "insideout maneuver" on the penis of a 47yearold man. You might think witnessing such procedures would give Roach pause. But she is not merely fond, as she puts it, of the "wanton use of first person" she throws herself into the story. When Jing Deng, a senior lecturer in medical physics at University College London Medical School, mentions in a paper on 4D ultrasound of male genitals that he hopes to one day capture a realtime image of human intercourse, Roach asks permission to watch the first scan. She is told that if her "organization" could provide the brave couple, Deng would be happy to oblige. "My organization gave some thought to this," she writes. Ever frisky, Roach and her spectacularly gracious husband, Ed, are soon bound for London, where they will perform coitus inside a hospital room while Deng maneuvers an ultrasound wand over their significant body parts, pausing only to reboot his computer. Still, Roach is sometimes stymied. Virginia Johnson of Masters and Johnson refused all interview requests; Scott, Johnson's son and spokesman, turns Roach away with a curt: "We're really not interested in getting involved. Follow?" Perhaps understandable. Roach has a knack for posing the embarrassing, nonlinear and too obvious questions that others are always afraid to ask. When she quizzes an infertility specialist about whether female orgasm increases the chances of conception, he sighs and says: "I think by now you know how science is. ... I know a lot about artificial insemination, but I have no idea about the answer to your very simple question." One of the serious, and most disturbing, themes of "Bonk" is the difficulty of conducting sex research in an era of corporatized and politicized medical science. If the study of female sexual pleasure doesn't lead pointedly in the direction of a sheViagra, chances are it won't get studied. One senses the clock ticking on Dr. Ahmed Shafik, a Cairobased sexologist who studies sexual reflexes, often on the sly. He is, his office manager tells Roach, a holdover from the 19th century, "when science was undertaken simply for the sake of understanding the world." In cases in which the medical community proves ill equipped to respond to her relentless queries, Roach gamely approaches the corporate world. To find out whether selfstimulation holds any medical benefits (answer: yes!), she pays a visit to Topco, a sextoy manufacturer. A tour of the factory produces the unlikely sight of a man in blue smock and hairnet overloaded with chocolatebrown dildos, and teams of Latina factory workers carefully handstaining dildo tips. "I asked a girl one day, 'Do your parents know what you do?'" Topco's chairman tells Roach. "She says, 'No, I just tell them I work in plastics.'" PERHAPS it's petty to criticize a writer for being too curious, but occasionally Roach's enthusiasm runneth over. In a book best described as lightly organized, Roach's promiscuous use of footnotes occasionally becomes distracting. Yes, learning how an erection can be compared to nasal congestion is interesting, but not in the middle of major penis surgery. Yes, it is possibly of interest that the name Dorcus was once trendy enough to bestow on a popular embroidery magazine, but need that interrupt a discussion of "rectal electroejaculators"? (Don't get excited they're intended for livestock.) The marginalia also distract her from asking some basic questions, like, When did sex research shift from prudish to freewheeling to corporatecontrolled? How did this happen, and why? Finally, despite Roach's great sense of humor, her smirkiness can sometimes get in her way. She could probably have lost the comparison of vaginal fistulas to the Three Tenors, and it may have been overspeculation to suspect that the male model in an instructional video on pelvic floor exercises is the author of a study on the subject. But these are quibbles over an otherwise greatly satisfying romp. And as a woman who could make an earthworm evisceration riveting and a hemispherectomy seem downright jolly, Roach can't be faulted for having fun with sex. Even if purely for the purposes of research. Pamela Paul, a frequent contributor to the Book Review, is the author of "Parenting, Inc.," to be published next month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The New Yorker dubbed Roach the funniest science writer in the country. OK, maybe there's not a lot of competition. But even if there were thousands of science-humor writers, she would be the sidesplitting favorite. Of course, she chooses good subjects: cadavers in Stiff (2003), ghosts in Spook (2005), and now a genuinely fertile topic in Bonk. As Roach points out, scientists studying sex are often treated with disdain, as though there is something inherently suspicious about the enterprise. Yet through understanding the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of sexual response, scientists can help us toward greater marital and nonmarital happiness. Such altruistic intentions, which the book shares, aren't the wellspring of its appeal, however. That lies in the breezy tone in which Roach describes erectile dysfunction among polygamists, penis cameras, relative organ sizes and enhancement devices, and dozens of other titillating subjects. Not to be missed: the martial art of yin diao gung ( genitals hanging kung fu ), monkey sex athletes, and the licensing of porn stars' genitals for blow-up reproductions. To stay on the ethical side of human-subjects experimentation, Roach offers herself as research subject several times, resulting in some of her best writing.--Monaghan, Patricia Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Roach is not like other science writers. She doesn't write about genes or black holes or Schradinger's cat. Instead, she ventures out to the fringes of science, where the oddballs ponder how cadavers decay (in her debut, Stiff) and whether you can weigh a person's soul (in Spook). Now she explores the sexiest subject of all: sex, and such questions as, what is an orgasm? How is it possible for paraplegics to have them? What does woman want, and can a man give it to her if her clitoris is too far from her vagina? At times the narrative feels insubstantial and digressive (how much do you need to know about inseminating sows?), but Roach's ever-present eye and ear for the absurd and her loopy sense of humor make her a delectable guide through this unesteemed scientific outback. The payoff comes with subjects like female orgasm (yes, it's complicated), and characters like Ahmed Shafik, who defies Cairo's religious repressiveness to conduct his sex research. Roach's forays offer fascinating evidence of the full range of human weirdness, the nonsense that has often passed for medical science and, more poignantly, the extreme lengths to which people will go to find sexual satisfaction. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
After Stiff (about cadavers) and Spook (about the afterlife), Roach gets lively with this account of sexual physiology. With a 12-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Wondering whether orgasms make sows more fertile? Turn to Roach for the answer. One of the funniest and most madcap of science writers, the author has approached sticky subjects to hilarious effect in her two previous books. Stiff (2003) looked at the many uses to which human cadavers have been put, while Spook (2005) told of science's attempts to understand the afterlife. Her latest is no less captivating or entertaining, as she flings wide the closed doors behind which the scientific study of coitus has traditionally been conducted. Roach details the careers of sex researchers Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, Marie Bonaparte (Napoleon's great-grand-niece) and porn-star-turned-Ph.D. Annie Sprinkle, among others. Such researchers "to this day, endure ignorance, closed minds, righteousness, and prudery," she writes. "Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best." Emulating her subjects' daring spirit, Roach displays a firm belief that there is no question too goofy to ask--or, barring that, to Google. What happens when you implant a monkey testicle in a man: Does he get more vital, or does he get an infection? She explores centuries of research into such questions as how penile implants work (a pump could be involved); whether surgically relocating the clitoris can lead to better sex (no); why the human penis is shaped as it is (to scoop out competitors' sperm); and what exactly is going on when it enters a vagina (shockingly, there is still much to learn). Apart from its considerable comic value, the book also emulates its predecessors by illustrating a precept of scientific research: The passion to know, in the face of censure and propriety, is what advances our understanding of the world. A lively, hilarious and informative look at science's dirty secrets. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
