A review by jamesflint
History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason

1.0

“What do you wish, my child?” “To make my own way in the world.” “Then you must marry a man with talent and ambition, whose interests you may serve as your mother has served mine. That is the way in which a woman may succeed.” “I am capable of succeeding on my own, papa.” “I do not doubt it. But that is not the way of the world.”

Rep: male bi side character

This book has been sat on my desk, waiting for me to read it, for the best part of a year. I was drawn into buying it by the promise of a bisexual character (and also, the cover is very pretty). Unfortunately, this book didn’t live up to what I thought it could be.

For about 75% of the book, there was very little going on besides Jacobina’s cheating on her husband with Piet. Yes, there was the “healing” of Egbert happening also, but it was essentially a side story rather than what Piet’s job was advertised as. There was a lot of sex between Jacobina and Piet, and pretty explicit stuff too (which I skim read). I know, I know, when it’s a book called History of a Pleasure Seeker I should expect those kinds of things, and I did. I just didn’t expect the sex scenes to be written quite so badly. I mean, I laughed out loud at some parts of them.

My second complaint is this “bisexual” character. I mean, it’s perfectly possible that when this book was put on the list(s) (I can’t remember if I found it on just one, or multiple), they were referring to either Didier or Jay and not Piet. Even if they were, I find that a bit tenuous. Didier hardly expressed interest in having sex with women, besides as a means of also having sex with Piet, and Jay, while married, showed no such interest either. Which begs the question, what exactly is it about Piet that makes people want to put him on a bisexual characters list. Because I would argue against his inclusion – he is aware of his being attractive to both men and women (he mentions it at least twice), but he doesn’t actively covet men, only women. Yes, I get that the part where he and Jay have sex (again, tenuous, I’ll get to that) is perhaps suggestive of some sort of preference, but I don’t think so. For one, Jay is the one who initiates it, and it seems that Piet just goes along with it but doesn’t participate (consent issues, perhaps?) and when questioned about it by the girl he goes on to marry, his answer doesn’t suggest that he would be willing to do it again. He says something about it being a novel kind of thing.

And another thing: the ending is rather abrupt. He meets this girl, they have three days of continuous sex and then she says ‘oh I’m probably pregnant now’ and he says ‘well, we’d best marry then’. Right. All in about the space of 10-15 pages.

Besides these issues, the book was OK. It was mostly well written (apart from the sex scenes) and it went by pretty quickly when I actually got into reading it. But there were no stakes to this affair Piet has. There is no hint whatsoever, until it is actually uncovered at 75% or so, that someone might know about it. It’s just too safe to be a believable affair, I’m sorry.

I think I can sum up this book thus: rich, white people dossing around, having sex. Alternatively known as, a waste of money.