Sex and Death in the American Novel

by Sarah Martinez

Vivianna Post is the family anomaly. Daughter of a Pulitzer Prize winner and an academic, she has never quite fit her parents’ expectations as a free-spirited erotica writer.

When Vivianna encounters the award-winning author Jasper Caldwell at a nightclub, all she wants is to blame him for blowing off her brother at a writers’ conference the year before and possibly causing his suicide. But as the night—and then the weeks—wear on, Vivianna finds herself drawn to Jasper in ways she cannot understand.

When their differences—literary and sexual—threaten to pull Vivianna and Jasper apart, Jasper rediscovers Alejandro, an old friend who just might have the power to complete them both in every way.

Using quotes and references to classic erotic and literary icons, Sex and Death in the American Novel is on one level an unconventional romance and on another a discussion of the merits of erotic literature.

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2012

About the author

Literary Heroes: Junot Diaz, Marco Vassi, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Rice, Richard Russo and Clive Barker

Current author favorites include: Henry Miller, Sandra Cisneros, Robert Boswell, Vladimir Nabokov, Meg Wolitzer and David Guy

THE PAST

Born in the South, and raised on both coasts, Sarah Martinez has seen and done a lot. Some might say too much, but where's the fun in that? Sarah says: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger, but that doesn't mean it won't leave a mark." She thinks of her stories as a way to show off the marks and hopes for rave reviews.

The days spent fishing, camping beside deep mountain lakes, exploring hillsides covered in Huckleberries, to the culture shock of living in Washington DC, the people she met, and places she landed as a runaway, all make for lively conversation and reading material.

She tells outrageous stories about scary rehabs, sadistic counselors, escape attempts, and life afterward with a manic depressive mother who was heavily involved in Republican politics.

Sarah wrote her first book and self-published it at the age of seven, when she wrote the original words and pictures to the children's title which shall remain nameless, lest her critics judge her unfairly.

Sarah had a hard time adjusting to life on the east coast, and at fourteen began running away from home; at one point making it all the way to Los Angeles. As a result over one year of her life was spent behind the cold concrete walls of a warehouse in Springfield, VA, known as Straight, Inc. After this she spent several years attempting to find herself before moving back to Montana with her mother and sisters.

Sarah found growing up a difficult task. Eventually she graduated from Seattle University with a degree in International Business, believing that if she got an English degree she would end up broke.

THE PRESENT

She is married with two lively daughters and finds that life with a family and career is a constant balancing act.

She finds inspiration in everything from the comments of Rush Limbaugh to the music and performances of Marilyn Manson and most recently Leslie A. Fiedler’s 'Love and Death in the American Novel'.

She loves to ski, dance the Argentine tango, and read, read, read.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has erotica, romance (yes, the two are different), realistic portrayals of the human experience, and is beautifully written to boot! It's a wonderful read that had me hooked in the first paragraph. The characters are believable, witty, flawed, and dynamic. I loved reading from Vivianna's perspective, and her friends and family were incredibly interesting and believable characters as well. Not only did Sarah Martinez deal with grief, love, happiness, guilt, and a whole heap of other human emotions really well (and believably!), she also toyed with the rigid characterizations of sexual men and women, blurring traditional boundaries and taking me to places I hadn't been before. I highly recommend this book for anyone at all interested in thinking more about what the human experience is--although if you're easily offended this may not be for you.

I want to stress how realistic this book seemed. For instance, the character Jasper Caldwell is at first presented as a stereotyped boring, unexciting professor type who doesn't have time for anyone other than his important self. However, as soon as Vivi (the character from whose perspective the reader receives the narrative) meets him, his entire persona changes. The stereotype Vivi (and the readers) thought he was is just some caricature, and his actual personality is much more nuanced and interesting. This is an experience that we've probably all had, and the way Sarah Martinez presents it is amazing.

I also really enjoyed the points in the book where the characters are discussing how a book should deal with sex, and personally I side with Vivianna here--sex is a part of life, and it should be described in just as much detail as the author wants to describe a delectable meal or a beautiful outfit (if not in more detail). And I think Sarah Martinez does a wonderful job here. Her story is sexy, and I felt a little embarrassed to be reading it on a plane. I also felt a little guilty, like I should be appreciating the sentence structure or something like that (especially when Jasper's talking about gorgeous sentence structure), but doing so would have taken me out of the story.

To sum it up, I loved the way the characters reacted to and grew around each other, how they re-discovered themselves and redefined themselves, and I relished their intellectual discussions (even when I had no idea what they were talking about). It's definitely a recommended read (especially for my fellow VF book clubbers!)

[Jack Remick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Triadic Universal and the Fundamental Theorem of Fiction in Sex and Death in the American Novel.
© 2012 By Jack Remick
In the contemporary literary culture of IMs, instant reviews, and Amazon.com, reviews have become little more than popularity contests. A hundred friends retell the story in a post and the writer reads the retelling of the story she already knows so well and is satisfied.
But a review is more than retelling the story.
In this culture of instant everything, if we are to see what our writers are doing and how what they are doing connects to the past in such a way that we are not doomed to relieve the past, it has to be the critic’s role to go deeper, to identify the roots of the writing, to identify the major elements that lie under the writing, that inform, that conform the story for the contemporary mind. We have to be aware of this—no story comes into existence tabula rasa. But every story, call it the metaphor, rides on a deep and archetypal river which I see as the myth base. Beneath the myth base, with its archetypal elements (see Erich Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconscious) there is the ritual. Ritual is the power house that drives fiction.
Now, what do I mean by myth base? What do I mean by ritual?
In Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate, the writer of the screenplay reveals the myth base to be the story of a Warrior (a Jungian archetype) who returns home to find his Mother (a Jungian archetype) has killed his Father (a Jungian archetype) and taken a Lover (the Intruder is a Jungian Archetype) as replacement. The Warrior then kills the Mother and her Lover and in turn is punished for the killing.
Here, we see the myth base indexing the Oresteia by Aeschylus. In the Oresteia, Orestes returns home to find his father, Agamemnon dead, and his mother, Clytemnestra living with her lover, Aegisthus. Let me lay out the myth base as a triad to show how The Manchurian Candidate uses that myth base:
Orestes = Raymond Shaw = Warrior
Clytemnestra = the Mother = Mother
Aegisthus = the Lover = King (in The Manchurian Candidate, the Lover would be President = King).
The myth base then is built on a ritual triad of King Replacement.

Here’s the rub—when we think of myth, our minds go right to Greek and Roman myth. Roman and Greek myths are the temporal versions of the myth base just as any contemporary novel is a version of its myth base. But Greek and Roman myth are not MYTH. Any myth from any culture will contain aspects of the universal myth and in every mythology the retelling is in the time and culture of the tellers. This is one reason why our modern historical writing has to speak not just to the issues of that former time, but to the issues of our time as well.
In our readings of Claude Levi-Strauss and Erich Neumann, we see the deeper aspects of the myth base—that bedrock—the ritual. Rituals appear in pairs, dyads, call them polarities. The dynamics of all myth, as Levi-Strauss has told us, involve the mediation of a set of oppositions to a third and new polarity. In other words—a Triad.
What does that get us when we look at Sarah Martinez’s Sex and Death in the American Novel?
Martinez has built this novel on a set of triads.
Vivianna-Jasper-Alejandro
Vivianna-Jasper-Tristan
Vivianna-Jasper-Dad
Vivianna-Tristan-Dad
Vivianna-Laura-Jasper
Vivianna-Eric-Barbara
Vivianna-Dad-Mom

The triad is the fundamental theorem of fiction. It is in the resolution of the triads that the dramatic tension of the metaphor occurs. In the epigraph to Justine, Lawrence Durrell cites Freud—“I am accustoming myself to the idea of regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved. We shall have a lot to discuss about that.” SF.
From that quartet you can extract sets of abstract triads which form the crux of the drama:
Woman-Lover-Father
Man-Lover-Mother
Woman-Lover-Mother
Man-Lover-Father
And, of course, the modern synthesis—the incestuous quadrangle.

The paradox of the modern writer is two-fold:
1. To write deep, she must go beyond the norm.
2. To go beyond the norm, she must defeat the urge to construct.

If the writer chooses to retell, reframe, redo a known story or known myth, that reframing will always be constructed in the way A Thousand Acres is constructed—and therefore false. If you look at West Side Story you see Romeo and Juliet. If you look at Romeo and Juliet, you see Piramus and Thisbe. If you look at Piramus and Thisbe, you see the Fundamental Theorem revealed in a broken mating ritual in which the lovers die because warring clans forbid a tainted love to flower. Love flowering is the ultimate metaphor of the biological imperative—Fruit of my loins, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh.
René Claire, the French film-maker, has written that American cinema is about the formation of a couple. 21st Century American writing is about the formation of a family. In that framework how do we proceed to discuss Sarah Martinez’s Sex and Death in the American Novel?
A good starting point is in the age of the protagonist—Vivianna. Vivianna, a name with evocative power and index to life. Vivianna is young, fertile, prolific, a novelist, a creator of modern myths. Martinez has said that sex in her writing is a metaphor for writing. In this, the underpinnings of the writing are intense and they are biological. The urge to create, once divorced from procreation yet coupled with that impulse, gives us novels, cities, civilization. Civilization is nothing less than the externalization into non-meat forms of the creative urge. Let us build.
Vivianna’s physical target is Jasper—a virile, young, successful writer. Martinez devotes equal time to writing about Jasper’s writing and writing about his body. And it is a magnificent body, a luscious body, a desirable body. In short, it is biology, the urge to mate that drives Vivianna to Jasper using sex as a metaphor for writing. In the world Martinez creates in S&D, writing is a sexual act, even, perhaps, a substitute for the procreation of meat. Meat dies, rots, disappears, but writing has, at least, a small chance of survival. In the early days of the intrusion of sociobiological thinking into the intellectual discourse, writers sometimes said that Ideas are like Genes. In that analogy, books are like children. This completes the biological-writerly cycle.
Into the Vivianna-Jasper voluptuousness, there comes a third character—the completion of the triad—Alejandro.
Alejandro is a young, virile, beautiful genius who speaks in ways Vivianna has never heard before. Vivianna is driven by Alejandro’s overt sexuality which is indexed by his ability to dance. The dance as precursor and model to sex is a powerful force in Vivianna’s life. Alejandro loves both Vivianna and Jasper, thus forming the triad based on a biological dynamic—the female driven to succeed both as a writer and as meat because even if the goal of the couple isn’t offspring, the biology still drives the relationship and the mating ritual continues as the male searches for the best mate with whom to build the biological family. Here, Martinez brings writing into the 21st Century.
After fifty years of sociobiological shaping of thought, we see that the driver in all relationships is female choice. In 21st Century writing, gender is central. Martinez participates in and anticipates the modern synthesis—the free woman who asks the question—Why monogamy? And at the same time, this attitude hooks into the horrors of 21st Century brutality by implication—rape, forced procreation, male dominated relationships, female as receptacle with no choice—do you see the last Balkan War in microcosm here? Do you see the extremes of certain Middle Eastern law—woman as possession? It’s not to be in Sex and Death in the American Novel but it is indexed by its opposite—the loving and intense relationship.
Martinez’s solution is a triad. Why not, she asks, a triadic relationship?
In this novel, Martinez brings on stage an entire generation, a new generation for which gender is a paramount issue—straight, gay, transgendered. The body is focus. Pleasure is primary and a prerequisite to creation—writing about sex is a metaphor for writing. Writing the sexual novel becomes more than an act of rebellion, but pushes the boundaries of expectation and acceptability.
The triads and their consequences index the myth base. Genes don’t shut off just because we live in cities. We still select for fitness. You can’t escape biology and the novelist, in world-creating mode, carries all of the history and biology of human evolution to that creation. Each novel becomes a microcosm of evolution. The biological imperative still remains—survive, mate, procreate. Everything else is window dressing. To wipe away any doubt about the biological subtext in Sex and Death, Martinez writes: “In the rich velvet lined theater of my mind, I study the face of the man in my arms; so much younger and more vulnerable without his glasses, though the stubble itching (sic) the heel of my hand reminds me he is indeed a man.”
In the novel, we see the life cycle play out in all its transformations: Vivi destroys Jasper's safe world; Alejandro destroys Vivi's edenic view of Jasper; together they create a new reality very much in the mythic vein that Levi-Strauss writes about in Mythologiques...Creation-destruction-resurrection. All writing is myth and ritual. The metaphor of the modern triad is independent of its deeper mythic implication which renders myth as the key to understanding the creative process. To reiterate--Greek and Roman myth are not MYTH. Any myth from any culture will contain aspects of that same myth base and in every mythology the retelling is in the time and culture of the tellers. This is how Martinez writes both a contemporary novel and a myth, but a myth without any overt and recognizable “Classical” connection, a myth that instead plays out in a ritualized way. To see it, we look at the triadic relationships:
Vivianna wants Jasper.
Vivianna wants Alejandro.
Alejandro wants Jasper.
Jasper wants both Vivianna and Alejandro.
Alejando wants both Vivianna and Jasper.
The force of the subtext reveals the central questions of our time—What are we? Who are we? One of the foundation myths of our time finds body in the story of Tiresias as set down by Ovid in The Metamorphosis. Tiresias is changed from male to female by the gods. Metaphorically he experiences both sides of the red river. What is male-female transgendering but this myth rendered in the meat world? In Sex and Death, Martinez brings us face to face with these contemporary phenomena—the polysexual, the polyamorous, the gay, the lesbian, the transgendered. Freed from the hypocritical and conservative bombast of psycho-religiosity that confines humans to male or female without regard to the very important biological reality of chance which plants a female mind in a male body, Martinez shows us that we are free to become who and what we know we are and what we know is that there aren’t just two sexes. There are three, four, five, six, ten, twenty. And we have to face that reality because that’s what our writers are giving us.
Martinez identifies her protagonist, Vivianna (remember the roots of that name—vif, vive, viva, vital) as a “writer of smut.” Smut. The world of four letter words. But Vivianna, and by extension Martinez, is more than that—she works in the stream of writers who spring from the Marquis de Sade, Wilhelm Stekel, Henry Miller, Eric Jong, Ann Rice—all rebels who will not let the prudish, post-Victorian, religio-crazy censors shut down any part of our experience or our language. In Sex and Death Vivianna’s mother asks her this vital question:
“You’ve been writing for a while now Vivianna, don’t you think it is time to move past this need to write so explicitly about something most people don’t really want to read about?”
The Mother, one point on the Vivianna-Mother-Father triad, still exists in the restricted and constipated world of “niceness”. Nice people don’t talk about sex; they don’t want to read about sex; they don’t want to use the words of sex that come from our long and complex literary past. But Martinez does want to use them. She shows us what happens to the writing when you refuse to titillate but choose instead to bring the biology out of the background and into face and eye and ear of the reader. No more implication. Sex is too important, too real, too powerful to be hidden under the baggage and garbage of titillation and innuendo. If you say it outright, then you can move on and by moving on you open new vistas onto worlds just coming into being. Writing as progress, not retrograde denial of desire. Writing as refusal to accept the precious euphemism of “nice” writing.
At the heart of Vivianna’s rebellion are the dual characteristics of Desire and Clarity. This is, of course, the same duality that Nietzsche identified as the Dionysian and Apollonian. Martinez knows that we are sexual animals, but released from biology, we can act on our desires. She knows that we do not have to hide behind masks of shame for being sexual animals. She knows that we don’t want to imagine our mothers and fathers fucking—they are the third and fourth persons Freud alludes to—but our mothers do fuck and if they are multiparous, they fucked more than once but still we don’t want to use that part of the language, that “dirty” part no one wants to read about because to use it is to remind ourselves that we are sexual animals—evolution doesn’t take a holiday just because the censor says not to use Anglo-Saxon words. Martinez lifts us past that the savage reticence of the conservative mind and gives us sex as enjoyment, sex as pleasure, sex as exploration, sex as metaphor and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.

[Anne Conley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give five star ratings to book that have shaped my life in some way, so I haven't given many to books that I've read lately. Sex and Death in America, however has changed the way I look at romance novels in general, and my own writing specifically. I loved it.

Written from the POV of Vivi, a young woman struggling with the oppressive ghost of her father, falls in love with one of his biggest fans. Ironically, her late brother is her boyfriend's biggest fan. Jasper (boyfriend) is a literary author, while Vivi is a writer of erotica, so the main superficial conflict is obvious, while underlying conflicts are less so.

This is an erotic romance novel written like a literary novel, and it blew my mind. I don't often re-read books, but this one will definitely demand that I do so.

Sarah Martinez has a clean, fresh writing style that evoked emotions in me I hadn't realized were so close to the surface. She made me think about myself, instead of escaping into some fantasy world, with perfect men, and great sex. In that regard, this was a very literary book. But it was also extremely erotic, almost painfully so.

I will be thinking about this book for days.

[Christyc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so much more than I anticipated. Sexy, yes. Amazingly, complicatedly (in a good way) sexy. Somehow it is realism and fantasy both and in the right proportions.

But it's not just sex. Martinez's philosophy is that sex is a part of life, so how can you write about life while not acknowledging sex.

And speaking of philosophy, there are a number of conversations about the questions of life. Like the one about representations of beauty on television. I really enjoyed these. It truly felt like sitting around with good friends indulgently exploring ideas.

On one level (this book has multiple) this is a book about writing, about different ways in which a person can be a writer. Interesting to readers who are writers and to readers who are not. The literature references abound but are not off-putting. This is one of those books that I'd like to go back through to build a reading list from the mentions of titles and authors.

The characters are well-drawn and the story is compelling. This is definitely worth a read.

[Isla McKetta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightfully unabashed novel that spans literature, love, and eroticism. Anyone who reads Fifty Shades of Grey and finds it misogynistic might enjoy the sex positive attitude in Sex and Death in the American Novel instead. Check out my blog for insight on what this book says about commitment to art and the beauty of becoming a whole, fulfilled person.

[Pavarti Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and no promise of a positive review was made.

Review: Sex and Death in the American Novel is sexy, smart, heartbreaking, romantic, transgressive and deeply deeply intimate. It also wasn’t the book I was expecting to read. Rarely does the first person narrative come this close to the introspective exploration of quality memoirs, but this one does. I found myself not only lost in the world of the story but relating to the main character, Vivi, in such a way I could imagine her a friend, a confident, an alter ego.
Cover of "A Spy in the House of Love"

Cover of A Spy in the House of Love

There are a lot of qualities about this book from a literary and erotica point of view that I’ll get into in a minute, and turst me, they are all there in spades, but the point that got me so deeply was how exciting it was to read references and arguments so close to my own. Like the main character, I grew up reading Henry Miller, deSade, Anais Nin and other books teachers, parents of my friends and other adults all though pornographic or inappropriate. I actually had a high school English teacher try to have me suspended and take my copy of Spy In The House of Love away from me on the grounds that it was pornographic. My mother, gods bless her, fought with the administration and I got my book back. Her argument? Who cares what she’s reading? She’s READING for fun and at a level well beyond what was being assigned in class.

The way the main character waxes poetic about the beauty of Miller’s writing, the feminist refusal to see the truth in the baseness of pornography, and her own desire to turn the assumptions about her gender on its head spoke to me as a reader and as an author. I want to know her. I want to read Boy in a Box - the fictional novel Vivi writes in the book. I want to browse her bookshelf and kiss her lips. I want to show her she’s not alone and she’s not the only one. I try to keep myself from conflating the main character and the author too much, as one is wont to do, but I have to admit, I’m finding it difficult not to hope Ms. Martinez might just understand me the way I feel I understand her.

Sex and Death in the American Novel deals with issues of sexual identity, coming out to your self and those around you, as well as the construct of binary relationships. No one in the book declares themselves bisexual (which I actually really liked because it was more honest with how they viewed themselves) but always spoke of love, pleasure and experience. The different relationship dynamics explored were essential to the plot of the story. It’s interesting to note that the first time the couple makes love they are with a woman and at the end, they are with another man. This book ends their sexual development together and the growth of who they are as people as well as sexual being in a very honest and evocative way.

Sex and Death in the American Novel is also beautifully written. The descriptions of Vivi dancing, the way she loses herself in the movement and exhalation, blew me away. I could feel the heat of the club, the taste of the sweat on her skin, the glow of euphoric release. And the sex, gods the sex was hot. While I don’t think this novel could ever be considered just erotica, it does definitely show the authors skill at erotic content. It was moving, emotional, sexy and kinky all at the same time.

But don’t think this is just a book about getting off. It’s really a book about connecting, to others and self, and a book about forgiveness. Remember the title is Sex and Death in the American Novel. I’m not going to go too much into the specifics of how death is a central theme, because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to tell me what was going to happen before I read it, but what I can tell you is that I was moved to tears – multiple times. Within the first few chapters I found myself sitting in the parking lot of my daughters’ school waiting for them to be dismissed, sobbing. Another time, near the end, I had to put the book down and go hug the giant dog while I shook with tears. Books rarely move me this deeply.

There are some things I’d have liked more exploration into, but mostly it comes at the end and the logistics of how their situation will work. There’s a certain “Happily Ever After” feeling which is hard to believe. The relationship the characters enter into at the end is non-traditional and takes quite a lot of honesty and negotiations. Personally, I would have believed their happy ending more if there had ever been a discussion about those things. However, the author wraps things up, bringing all the pieces together nicely in a way that would have probably been ruined if she addressed this. So in the end, I support the way it was done.

Well done Ms. Martinez – from one deviant to another – Bravo!

[Ryan Ananat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex and Death in the American Novel. How could someone who has a Ph.D. in American Studies not love a book whose title cheekily hearkens back to one of the books that founded my interdiscipline? Unlike Leslie Fiedler’s volume, Martinez’s is a novel. Or, I should say. A meta-novel. For, it as much a study of contemporary American literature as Love and Death in the American Novel was of American literature from the colonial period to the 1950s. It’s a smart and entertaining novel (a pair of adjectives you rarely see together, which is one of the things Martinez tacitly critiques). It's also a scathing commentary on how academia has sucked the life out of literature. The story would be gripping if the characters weren’t writers. But making them so allows Martinez to comment on the big house (I use that phrase pointedly) publishing industry and present more independent-minded alternatives. It also stages a delightful dialogue between the “literary” and the “pulp,” one that shows a clear love and understanding of both, that shows that in the end they aren’t all that different, that they both have something to learn from the other, that they might as well get it over with it already and go for a roll around in the sack. The product of this intimate exchange: Martinez’s book.

I feel like there are pieces of myself scattered throughout Sex and Death in the American Novel. But do these pieces hang together? Or do my artsy-fartsy ambitions, ideas, methods get in the way of my work being able to join Martinez in saying: in this day and age, in order to be brainy, a book has to be all about the body. Not just in content. But in terms of the reading experience. A smart book is one that grabs you by the heart, by the guts. The pleasure of reading a smart book is basically the same thing as sexual arousal. We’ve all had our literary orgasms. Part of me wonders whether my whole life as a reader and writer isn’t just one long tantric sex session.

[Nikki McCormack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex and Death in the American Novel by Sarah Martinez isn’t my typical fare. I’m a fantasy and science fiction geek. Reading something in literary erotica was a bit of a dive off the deep end for me. I truly expected not to like it and I was very pleasantly proven wrong.

The protagonist in the novel, Vivianna, is a woman who, on the outside, seems to know who she is. She’s an erotic fiction author. Her relationship with her mother and brother are convoluted, tense, loving, and relatively typical of many family relationships on the surface, with a clear bit of unsettle history around her deceased, Pulitzer Prize winning father. Viv has some good friends, a successful career, and she’s confident about her body and her sexuality in ways that most of us can admire.

On a high level, the story is a romantic, sensual and erotic tale that never slips into the common pitfall of becoming crass and vulgar, but on a deeper level, this is the story of a woman who lives her life crushed in the shadow of a father who, while dead, still rules over her and her family. It’s a moving and beautiful tale of one woman’s struggle to overcome the destructive need to prove herself to a man who is long gone and the devastating effect that same need has wrought upon her mother and brother. This is her journey to discover that, only by accepting and loving yourself for who you are, can you truly come to accept and love the people around you.

…

At least that is what this tale was for me. Your mileage may vary. Regardless, Sex and Death in the American Novel is a novel I strongly recommend.

Happy reading!

[Nikki Rehman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly your typical “bodice-ripper.”

Let me first say that I tend to be rather conservative, and don’t usually read books that fall under the “erotica” genre. That said, a couple of my favorite novels include some very well-written intimate scenes, so when I heard this book described as “literary erotica” and a “thinking woman’s erotica,” I decided to give it a try.

I don’t really know what “literary erotica” means. I tried looking it up on Bing, and closed the window in a prudish panic when I saw the search results (none of which included a definition, by the way.) I do know that I was a little put off by the many, many references to books and writers that I had never heard of by characters in this book. Perhaps that disqualifies me as a thinking woman by some definitions. I was also distracted in the beginning by the poor editing, but once I became involved with the story and grew interested in the characters, I didn't notice it nearly as often.

And I did, in fact, grow interested in the characters and their intertwined stories. Despite my discomfort with some of the unconventional sex scenes, I found myself caring about what happened to the characters, rooting for them, and staying up late because I didn't want to put the book down. If you’re looking for a typical romance or bodice-ripper, then this book may not be for you. If you’re open to unconventional romance and a wide variety of intimate configurations (girl/girl, girl/boy, boy/boy, girl/girl/boy, boy/boy/girl) and don’t mind the characters’ conversations being peppered with talk of authors and their works, then give this one a try!

[Loretta Matson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am the graphic designer for the first edition of this novel. I read an early draft and the final text.

Sex and Death appeals on many levels: escapist, sexy entertainment; gossipy brain candy; a dramatic story about the children of high-achieving parents; an expansive discussion of sexual identity; a pretty damned interesting reading list. In western society we have lots of labels for the way people identify. What if you could cut it even finer? What if your particular thoughts, feelings, and desires, those that crossed boundaries or varied with the situation, could be known and honored?

I know the author as a writer who cares deeply about good writing and about sexuality as an essential element in people's lives, in stories, in fictional plots, and character development.

The characters in this story express themselves to one another in the usual ways: friendship, family, shared pleasures. For some of them, the interaction includes dancing, sexual activity, and the art of writing. Sex and Death is packed with detailed descriptions of sensory experience along with thought-provoking discourse.

I like a story that hangs around in my brain for awhile when I'm done reading. This is one. Why only four stars? Because I know Sarah's next book will be even better.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vivianna Post is the family anomaly. Daughter of a Pulitzer Prize winner and an academic, she has never quite fit her parents’ expectations as a free-spirited erotica writer. When Vivianna encounters the award-winning author Jasper Caldwell at a nightclub, all she wants is to blame him for blowing off her brother at a writers’ conference the year before and possibly causing his suicide. But as the night—and then the weeks—wear on, Vivianna finds herself drawn to Jasper in ways she cannot understand. When their differences—literary and sexual—threaten to pull Vivianna and Jasper apart, Jasper rediscovers Alejandro, an old friend who just might have the power to complete them both in every way. Using quotes and references to classic erotic and literary icons, Sex and Death in the American Novel is on one level an unconventional romance and on another a discussion of the merits of erotic literature.

[S.M. McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In one sentence I would describe this story as: A new age romance delved in layers of self discovery, intellectual discussions, and the continual influences a loved one can make on life, even after death.

The novel starts off with the line, "Call me Vivianna." In the first page you discover the protag is a strong female writer and you get to read her creating what she writes best, gay erotica, until her thoughts are interrupted by the disapproving voice of her mother. The main character is witty, entertaining and full of snark, humorous despite the seriousness of the context. Her words often harsh to those around her are a brilliant display of Sara's ability to add depth to Vivi as you discover her underlying anger towards her father. S&D gets a 4 out of 5 review from me because I love it and as long as you aren't bothered by the literary warnings of strong language, sexual content, erotica, gay/three-some relationships then THIS book IS A MUST read! Go forth and get you some

[Arleen Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "The Triadic Universal and the Fundamental Theorem of Fiction in Sex and Death in the American Novel" Jack Remick writes "The Mother... still exists in the restricted and constipated world of 'niceness'. Nice people don’t talk about sex; they don’t want to read about sex; they don’t want to use the words of sex that come from our long and complex literary past."

Like Vivianna's mother in Sex and Death in the American Novel, I am also from that constipated world of niceness. Still, I admire Sarah Martinez's ability to break down barriers, to explore sexuality beyond the simplistic and artificial limits of heterosexual relationships, and to write book that is as much about the act of writing as that of sex.

A very sexy book. A very brave writer.

[Everett Maroon · Rating 4 out of 5]

First up, I'm not typically an erotica reader. I mean, erotica is great and pushes boundaries in ways many other genres don't. Erotica has a place in literature, even if some would disdain its inclusion. In Sex and Death in the American Novel, Sarah Martinez pushes those prohibitions and presumptions in the themes of authorship, criticism, and regret, picking apart a family with literary aspirations. Certainly there is sex, but it is less straight-up titillation a la "Fifty Shades of" and more an investigation where the human drive for sex blends into other ambitions for success, love, and fulfillment. Martinez wants her sex objects to think and ask questions. Filled with references to echelons in contemporary literature, SaDitAN is a thinking woman's erotic novel. Highly recommended.

[Priscilla Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex, in Sex and Death in the American Novel by Sarah Martinez, is a long, slow, highly spiced meal, a dance, a quest, a search for a lost father in the shape of the lover, a trespass of conventional boundaries, a seeking after freedom and after art. This spectacular first novel is about grief and longing and literature. It's also a page-turner. I fell in love with Vivi, dancer and writer, and with both her lovers. In the end this is a deeply romantic love story about writing and dancing and loving in which the heroine must go to the wilderness alone to face down her demons. She returns to a sweeter and more generous (but still unconventional) intimacy. Read this novel!

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read. Martinez challenges the reader on several different planes. Sex and how fantasy, gender, and one's own preconceptions can inhibit or enlighten are explored in a multitude of fascinating ways. Where does erotica fit in the modern American novel? Her characters are real, even when they are fantastical. How does one resolve a familial conflict? Sibling rivalry, the grief after suicide, and its resolution. Martinez has written with courage, total mastery of her plot, and has gone where few dare.

[Linda Banana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to love it - the title alone makes it worth reading. It never really grabbed me, though. For one thing, there were a lot of grammar and punctuation mistakes. Sorry, but I'm a real stickler. It was good to read something intelligent and I enjoyed the references to literary erotica. I found the sex scenes involving the main protagonist quite cold, though, in how they were described. Better than a 3 but not quite a 4: my finger slipped.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the book. Parts of it keep coming back to me from time to time. Ifeel as if I have touched or was touched by something special by reading this book. I won't say anything more as I don't want to inadvertently give something away, just this, read it!

[Harmony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good book that makes you question yourself and helps you reflect on yourself. That's what this book did for me. Plus you add well written sex scenes and it's pretty much of bonus.