Review by Booklist Review
Jong cast a broad net to bring together women writing about sex and was shocked to discover many of them initially uncomfortable doing so. The resulting anthology attests the wide range of female sexual experience. From Jennifer Weiner's story on marriage, babies, and facing down mortality in the arms of a past romance to Susie Bright's raw reminiscence about physical intimacy with a casual acquaintance, the experiences Jong collected are as various as the women who share them. Fay Weldon, Susan Cheever, Anne Roiphe, Eve Ensler, Gail Collins, and Megan O'Rourke contribute, writing as much about what sexual contact means as about the act itself. From teenage guilt to childish curiosity to adult longing and disappointment, these pieces reflect less on the erotic charge of fantasy than on the realities of finding room for sex in hectic lives. In fact, romance plays little part in these stories and essays, while discussions of good, bad, shocking, and distracted sex abound, thus proving Jong's point that, more than anything. sex is life. --Mondor, Collee. Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this no-holds-barred collection of essays by "real women" about "real sex," Jong has assembled an eclectic group of authors: Fay Weldon's "My Best Friend's Boyfriend," about losing her virginity to her best friend's boyfriend at college not long after the end of WWII is witty and poignant; Eve Ensler pens a charming, rhythmic triologue in which three women muse longingly, and poetically, on their sexual pasts and fantasies ("Sometimes it's driving on the mad / Italian speedway at a thousand miles / Your face buried in his jeans"); Marisa Acocella Marchetto sketches a "Graphic Fantasy" about the adventures of a woman with a penis; gossip columnist Liz Smith divulges that her first cousin was the first man with whom she "went all the way"; Honor Moore writes a sexy, fragmented essay, spliced with quotes from the "taboo" Story of O: "...O tried to figure out why there was so much sweetness mingled with the terror in her, or why her terror seemed itself so sweet..." Early in the book, Susan Cheever muses that "sex tells the truth"; this collection is at its most profound when truth illuminates sex as a force in which these women found empowerment. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Best-selling author and poet Jong (Fear of Flying) compiles a powerful group of essays, stories, and monologs by women on their own sexual experiences. She chose the name of the anthology from traditional blues songs by women who focused on soulfully expressing the feminine sexual experience. The authors write in a variety of styles but are united by a common goal to express their truth and paint vivid pictures of the female experience with stark honesty, leaving out fairy tales and romance. As expected, explicit sexual language is present throughout, as women tackle their obsessions and kinks, lost innocence and enlightenment, and pain and yearnings. "The truth is," Jong shares in her introduction, "sex is life.the part that continues it and makes it bloom." VERDICT While this is not a comfortable collection, the passion, tragedy, and hope-offered by courageous women who express raw feelings that society tends to silence-will resonate.-Crystal Renfro, Georgia Inst. of Technology Lib., Atlanta (c) Copyright 2011. 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
Award-winning writer and high-flying sexual truth-teller Jong (Love Comes First, 2009, etc.) partners with 28 collaborators to create this fierce and refreshingly frank collection of personal essays, short fiction and cartoons celebrating female desire.The approaches to the still-taboo topic of feminine sexualityat least, for women writers seeking approbation from the literary establishmentare, as Jong notes, "as varied as sexuality itself" and as exuberantly diverse as the contributors themselves. They range from such emerging talents as Elisa Albert and J.A.K. Andres to such luminaries as Rebecca Walker, Eve Ensler, Susan Cheever, Anne Roiphe and Fay Weldon, and represent a multiethnic, multigenerational swath of some of the finest women writers in the United States. Most of the pieces deal with the perennial themes of sexual coming-of-age, social and religious sexual hang-ups and lusty obsessions for male bodies (as well as female ones). Some deal with lesser-discussedbut no less importantsubjects like procreative sex and eroticism in old age. Still others fearlessly explore fetishism, childhood masturbation, kink, sexual addiction and the excitement that, in the words of Linda Gray Sexton, comes from "the offering up of one's body like a sacrifice upon the temple of the bed." While sex is the source of life and some of the most powerful joysand agoniesimaginable, it is also invariably linked to death. And that, writes Jong, "is part of our discomfort with it." But the contributors to this collection never make sex facile. As they work against cultural expectations and literary double standards, they make women's depictions of "doing it" just another aspect of a more fully realized human consciousness.A smart, scrumptiously sexy romp of a read.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
