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A review by brittbat
The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran
Despite the hype The Book of the Most Precious Substance received in the little book community I'm a part of, I was less than enthusiastic about reading it for a long time, because I thought, "Surely that means jizz, right?" And I was unsure of my capacity for reading a book all about people collecting jizz.
But I loved Sara Gran's demonic possession book Come Closer, and I'm reading all sorts of things I might have been squeamish about at other times of my life, and the audiobook is only 8.5 hours, so I figured why not. Let's read the magical jizz book.
Well, to my surprise, it's actually the magical squirt book. And it's also quite good.
Or at least, I thought it was quite good. It is chock full of weird, rich people doing weird, rich people sex things, which appealed to the sensibilities that led me to read Story of O and Venus in Furs a handful of years ago. There is also a sort of heightened sensuality permeating the text that often takes the form of descriptions of food, and although I think it serves to illustrate the overall voluptuousness that the narrator's life takes on, I can see why some readers got tired of hearing about all the fancy meals our intrepid booksellers were eating in between fucks.
But I don't know, I just got really sucked into it. All of the characters have something wrong with them, some disappointment or loss or greed that creates an emptiness in them that they are compelled to fill, and so they make bad decisions that are fascinating to read about. Lily is somehow relatable while also being completely unrelatable, moving through a world of money and power that is completely foreign to me, but her practical concerns about things like medical bills ground her.
And ugh, she should have just stayed with the lesbian BDSM witches!!
Overall a quietly creepy, Faustian read, erotic but not terribly sexy, good for people who like books about books.
But I loved Sara Gran's demonic possession book Come Closer, and I'm reading all sorts of things I might have been squeamish about at other times of my life, and the audiobook is only 8.5 hours, so I figured why not. Let's read the magical jizz book.
Well, to my surprise, it's actually the magical squirt book. And it's also quite good.
Or at least, I thought it was quite good. It is chock full of weird, rich people doing weird, rich people sex things, which appealed to the sensibilities that led me to read Story of O and Venus in Furs a handful of years ago. There is also a sort of heightened sensuality permeating the text that often takes the form of descriptions of food, and although I think it serves to illustrate the overall voluptuousness that the narrator's life takes on, I can see why some readers got tired of hearing about all the fancy meals our intrepid booksellers were eating in between fucks.
But I don't know, I just got really sucked into it. All of the characters have something wrong with them, some disappointment or loss or greed that creates an emptiness in them that they are compelled to fill, and so they make bad decisions that are fascinating to read about. Lily is somehow relatable while also being completely unrelatable, moving through a world of money and power that is completely foreign to me, but her practical concerns about things like medical bills ground her.
And ugh, she should have just stayed with the lesbian BDSM witches!!
Overall a quietly creepy, Faustian read, erotic but not terribly sexy, good for people who like books about books.