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bluenicorn's review against another edition
2.0
I liked the concept of this more than the actual execution. Everyone is connected in such a way that it can be mapped out. I liked that. Some of the stories were mildly sexy, some were surprisingly sad or thought-provoking; but most were just sex. :) It wasn't bad, just not alot to it.
leerazer's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not sure if the library employee who put this work in the "similar to 50 Shades of Gray" display just did so because, "Hey, sex", or if they were knowingly being a little subversive, placing a non-erotic work of eroticism coming out of the French intellectualist movement of Oulipo in amidst all the sexual rabble. The latter would be fun.
Anyway, it's an amusing enough little divertisement, each page a very brief lighthearted sketch of a different couple's sexual encounter, the persons involved coming out of a limited pool of characters so that when all the couplings are graphed out you produce a couple of geometric patterns.
Thus form is the main thing and point, as is the Oulipo wont, while the writing is casually amusing, though nothing terribly special. The best chuckle for me:
Anyway, it's an amusing enough little divertisement, each page a very brief lighthearted sketch of a different couple's sexual encounter, the persons involved coming out of a limited pool of characters so that when all the couplings are graphed out you produce a couple of geometric patterns.
Thus form is the main thing and point, as is the Oulipo wont, while the writing is casually amusing, though nothing terribly special. The best chuckle for me:
Sofia and Dennis.
The memory of a scene in the film The Postman Always Rings Twice, directed by Bob Rafelson, in which Frank (Jack Nicholson) takes Cora (Jessica Lange) on the kitchen table, is clearly stimulating Dennis while he sodomizes Sofia on just that same item of furniture. Sofia, for whom sodomy is exciting but not quite orgasmic, is rubbing her clitoris faster and faster. The bottle of olive oil is marked "Cold-Pressed Extra Virgin," but that's irrelevant.
It occurs to Dennis that if he were a praying mantis, his female would now turn round and devour his head. He shivers.
danni_faith's review against another edition
5.0
This short book is deceptively simple. These interlocking erotic short stories—and yes, this is erotica, albeit literary erotica—capture the interconnectedness of people by their lovers. Le Tellier characterizes each person by showing us their sex lives. In these moments we see them experience monotony, humor, tenderness, puzzlement, excitement, and, in rare cases, love. I think this is genius; few moments are more revealing about a person than when they use their body to give pleasure to another body—assuming pleasure is achieved.
I say this book is deceptively simple because it is easy to miss how the sexual partner influences the experience of sex. The Anna that is with Ben is not the Anna that is the other men. The Wendy with Vincent is not the Wendy with Xavier. My only wish is that there were not only heterosexual couplings.
I say this book is deceptively simple because it is easy to miss how the sexual partner influences the experience of sex. The Anna that is with Ben is not the Anna that is the other men. The Wendy with Vincent is not the Wendy with Xavier. My only wish is that there were not only heterosexual couplings.
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