Okay, so it’s basically my own fault for not properly researching what I was reading. I knew of Anaïs Nin as a writer of fiction and essays, so when I picked up this slim volume of short stories, I thought little of it. But as it turns out, she also wrote erotic literature. I’ve reviewed quite a few graphic novels during this 100 Book Year, but this is my first set of graphic short stories. And by graphic, I don’t mean it has pictures. I took this to read this on the train, and as my misconception became clearer, found myself regularly glancing anxiously at the woman next to me in case she could read the content of the page I was on and now considered me a Public Transport Pervert.
It’s important to consider these stories in their proper context. Nin, a complex and controversial character, wrote mostly in the 1940s within a circle of mostly-male literary elite, and sought to find her place at the lead of it. She’s widely considered ground-breaking in the West as a woman writing explicitly (in every sense) about female sexual desire and experience.
These stories reflect that perfectly. Of the four, only one is written from the perspective of a man, and even that is about how he can figure out how to please his paramour rather than obtain his own pleasure. The others, written from first-person female perspectives, explore transgressive desires and fantasies as well as the complex system of highs and lows that define the particular ways that women experience sexuality. Which is obviously all very highbrow stuff to deliver through the medium of loads of doin’ it.
There’s some stuff to make you uncomfortable here. Her characters’ relationship with prostitution doesn’t generally feel realistic, although one does have an experience that makes it clear that her expectations and reality weren’t particularly aligned. But given that she was writing at a time when female sexuality was just starting to become unstuck from some of the moral bindings that had constricted it, it feels important that she’s writing about these things without judgement – since judgement was pretty much all women had had around sex for a long time.
The writing is really strong and vivid, although you can tell that erotica is still in development as a genre. I’m not sure many people would include the description moaning like a pigeon in modern-day erotica. But she is able to develop characters in depth in a very short amount of time, which is impressive. There's also some genuinely beautiful writing in there.
Overall: a really interesting piece of writing from its time, that in many ways still stands up today. And if you saw me reading it on the train, it was for research, honest.
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