analysands and kitchen hands

The Impossibility of Sex - Susie Orbach (1999)

“I felt twitches in my vagina, pleasurable contractions.  It was a sunny Sunday morning in spring, two years after I had stopped seeing Adam”. 

Now I’m no prude but I think Susie Orbach’s The Impossibility of Sex wins the dubious award of having the worst opening paragraph I’ve ever read.  To put things into context, the protagonist – a therapist - is alone in her kitchen, chopping fennel and thinking about a former patient (or ‘analysand’ if you want to use the professional lingo).  I imagine a woman in her forties wearing a long skirt made out of hemp, indulging in a detached fantasy about Adam “a fornicator, a lover, a stud”, then giving a smug little laugh and wryly shaking her head at herself for being so silly.  

After the contrived and slightly icky start, it took me a while to warm to the unnamed analyst narrating the stories of seven characters that visit her for psychotherapy.  Despite the admission of illicit attraction within the first sentence, the perspective of the therapist felt too contained and professional to ring true to me.  This might be explained by the fact that Susie Orbach is in real life a psychotherapist and therefore has a keen interest in preserving the image of her and her colleagues as wholly empathic and non-judgemental.  Or maybe I just wrongly presume that everyone is as cynical as me.   Note, don’t seek counsel from a lawyer. 

Soon enough, the fascinating subject matter of how the inner worlds of people are constructed and how these affect their relationships and actions engrossed me.  I kept a pencil between the pages of the book to underline bits of truth and wisdom as they arose.  I appreciated Orbach’s somewhat experimental style, attempting to combine narrative with psychoanalytical theory.  This might distance some readers but I found that it nicely balanced my emotional engagement with the stories and my desire for more general clinical information about the psychological challenges facing the characters. 

On an interesting side note, Orbach – currently Jeneatte Winterson’s partner – describes herself as “post-heterosexual”.  I very much like that description and the way it neatly side-steps the ‘usual’ tick-box categories of sexuality. 

The Impossibility of Sex - 3.5 feathers.

slap me happy

The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

Having recieved quite the emotional slap today, this seems like a vaguely symbolic way to start my blog.  I wonder what will happen when I read The Volcano Lover?

  

For three-quarters of 'The Slap' I squirmed in the company of its characters.  However realistic, their psychological preoccupations were often small, narcissistic and repetitive, particularly the men who – aside from the teenage boy Ritchie – were especially crude, cruel and selfish.  Perhaps Tsiolkas writes very truthfully about hetero sex from a certain type of male perspective but the frequency of their nose-wrinkle worthy fantasies and encounters had the effect of confirming my queerness like watching Shayne McCutcheon a-lean upon a doorway in pretty much every episode of the L Word.  Leeeeean away lady....

Anyway, putting my personal squirms and proclivities aside, this is a good book.  It is good for precisely the reasons it is at time unenjoyable or monotonous – it is very real.  I recognised people that I knew and moments I have lived.  When things happen (as opposed to when the characters are in rumination mode) then the book is quite gripping. 

Initially the ‘shifting perspectives’ method of storytelling is very interesting because there is the potential to learn important information about the gaps between a character’s self perception and how they appear to others. But about halfway through, the pace starts to drag and I feel like I spent too much time hearing the not-very-interesting thoughts of characters who do not reveal themselves to be more likeable or more complex than upon earlier presentation. The exception to this is the teenage characters who provide some hope for this world.  They – unlike the adults around them- seem to still be capable of genuine affection, love and curiosity and it is their involvement in the adult drama that provides a dramatic twist and a satisfying conclusion.

So I think I may adopt a rating system here and give it a solid 3 feathers.  My Grandpa read it twice, so that is nothing to sneeze at!

Adios fur jezt my amigas.  Watch this space for more book reviews and mangled Spermlish.