Same sorry repeated. I couldn’t read another one about a model and an artist ( )

“This little wound women have . . . it frightens me.”

I held off on reviewing this for obvious reasons. It's more than a little bold to tell the internet you've read an erotic novel, and even more so for a girl a few weeks out of high school. My peers, fortunately, are not flocking to Goodreads (though now is better than later to apologize to my 12th grade English teacher if she sees this, hello and sorry Ms. Leaney), and so with that weight flying off my shoulders like those pesky pedophilia-laced symbols of the birds, here I am.

My aunt gave me this book with trepidation a few months before I read it; when I left it beside the bed so as not to look too eager she promptly hid it in her dresser drawer to pretend the topic never came up. Well, reader, I found it—and it was a wild ride.

I was at first confronted with how shame-free the sexual exploits were. For something written in the early 1940s, pre-sexual awakening as we know it in the later decades, the affairs and acts are focused on the mental and physical pleasure rather than any internal woe for such blasé fecundity. The scenes were at times ridiculous, the acts intrepid—but beyond the unbelievable veil all pornography contains Nin sews a very human, compassionate, intelligent thread throughout the character's minds and actions. Starkly feminist, the power and sexual independence of the female leads was thrilling. Bisexuality is as normal as day, lesbianism as night, and the awakening of this and the character's broader sense of life was like a drug.

I'll never forget the beautiful lull it put me under as I began reading it on my flight into Dublin at 5 in the morning—Mahler one and a not too terrible tea by my side, the sunrise a radiant rainbow wash at the other. I don't know how to explain to you how erotica can be "intelligent", but you'll just have to believe me. Maybe it's the care of the human mind, maybe the prose that melts across your mind like velvet.

"The idea that the first man who takes a woman will have complete power over her... I think that is a superstition. It was created to help preserve women from promiscuity. It is actually untrue."

Nin, you have my vote.

Before I forget, I also read this while I was traveling with the rest of my English teachers in Scotland and Ireland, and boy was it a laugh. I'll never forget my junior year teacher Ms. Beebe's "naughty" and shoulder shimmy laugh, or my freshman English teacher Mrs. Floto asking what I was reading and flipping it over as we waited in US Customs before I could answer fully ("I mean, it's literature" "You're not wrong there"). ( )

This is certainly a collection of stories that don't hold back, exposing thoughts and actions often glossed over or thought of as uncivilised. The stories are beautifully written, these are literature, but not what is usually accepted as such. Go in with an open mind. These stories, even today, can be confronting in their candour. ( )

Since Anaïs Nin is quite the literary celebrity, I had high hopes for this one. Don't be fooled: this stuff is woefully thin and underwritten. I suspect that a bad translation might be partly to blame: How many times have you heard an erotic writer refer to somebody's "womb" in a bedroom scene? Even if that isn't the case, though most of these stories are barely sketched out, and the authorial voice is mostly a dull monotone. A couple of things do stand out from time to time. There are shade of Sacher-Masoch's Wanda here: Nin also has a thing about about furs. Also, to her credit, she doesn't shy away from discussing the more animalistic aspects of sex, and often emphasizes importance of the sense of smell in eroticism. Readers interested in the oh-so-naughty side of pre-war Paris might like a couple of the more seemingly autobiographical stories here. On the whole, though? There's nothing going on here. At least it's short. Fact is, I finished this one mostly so I could give it a bad review. ( )

Some of the stories are magical, some have no arch at all. Still, pretty good erotica and surprisingly candid in its treatment of themes that would usually be considered extremely tabooish. ( )