Intacta

by Tamara Faith Berger

En una playa inmunda de Cayo Hueso, atrapada en las vacaciones familiares, Myra conoce a Elijah, un músico tanzano que le dobla la edad. Ella arde en deseos de perder la virginidad con él, pero queda impactada al descubrir que vive con Gayl, una mujer reservada y violenta que le controla de manera extraña.

Myra y su desestructurada familia vuelven a casa; pero cuando Gayl y Elijah la siguen hasta su ciudad natal, ella se adentra por propia voluntad en un universo de juegos sexuales cada vez más turbios.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Erotica, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Womens, Sexuality

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

Tamara Faith Berger has published three novels: Lie With Me (2001), The Way of the Whore (2004) and Maidenhead (2012). Her first two novels were recently re-published as Little Cat (2013). She has been published in Taddle Creek, Adult and Apology magazine. Her work has been translated into Spanish and German. Tamara won the Believer Book Award for Maidenhead. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been on my list ever since Jezebel suggested it to those who want to "start a brawl at your book club." And I get it now! This one guy pees on a lady! I bet book clubs went batshit!

But it's about Hegel as much as it's about vaginas, which weirdly makes this my second book in two weeks to discuss his Master-slave dialectic, which I still don't really get. The book, anyway, is about dominance and submission and resistance. And also porn, which 16-year-old protagonist Myra enjoys describing to you and anyone else who will listen and several who won't. It's about the power imbalances between all people.

Berger writes Myra with this terrific, authentic teenage voice. One moment she's spouting hyperintelligent bullshit about Bataille, the next she's mumbling "My head felt like a lightbulb" for no reason as she gives a blowjob.

I don't get everything about this book. I seriously don't understand Hegel, and I've never even heard of Weil, and I don't know why Lee and Gayl get to interject their commentary, and there are hints that Myra is leaving some of this story out but I don't see them landing anywhere.

But "It was my conscious decision to trespass into a forbidden field of behavior," says Myra, and here we are: as many times as we've been shocked by obscenity throughout the history of literature, we've rarely gotten at all close to real sex, and certainly not from a woman's point of view, and certainly certainly not a horny virgin, our most adored and terrifying idol, and certainly certainly certainly not this ravenous being. "My pussy felt bloated," she says. "It smiled and glared." She has come here to transgress, and it's startling how startling that is.

[Kiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Maidenhead a week and a half ago and still haven't stopped thinking about it. It's a provocative book destined to have many haters; it is the antithesis of all that feminism stands for because of the female protagonist's masochistic exploits and the upsetting violence she willingly submits to; it is just well-written porn ... and yet. It is also the work of a gifted and bold author writing whatever she wants to, as un-PC as it may be — and isn't that feminism, too? It is an assertion that desire and sex are not always stirred by the dulcet tones of an easy-listening soundtrack, by orchestrated candlelight, or by sweet endearments. It is an argument that women's fantasies can be raw, dangerous, and addictive; that sometimes power is more complicated than who is doing what to whom in the instant, that sometimes we don't even want power (again, I refer to instants); that sometimes our bodies and brains crave different things.

All of this of course is highly problematic, especially in a year (2012) when Fifty Shades of Grey was so popular. It's one thing for a literary novel to raise incendiary questions, and another for a massive bestseller to glorify submission/masochism. It's highly problematic because of how much we owe to feminism (the radicals and the overall movement), and how much our culture is still in the nascent stages of valuing women for their brains and of treating them with respect ... not to mention culture in other parts of the world where women are so often degraded, abused, and even killed for their sex.

I had a visceral reaction to this book, however – the sexual parts at least (I wasn't a fan of the theory bits that seemed forced and pretentious) – and it reminded me how bored I have been with erotica that softens the edges of sex and that removes any element of taboo. I say this from the comfort of a loving and respectful relationship, I should say, which is perhaps why I found Maidenhead provocative rather than deeply disturbing.

In any case, it's worth a read. You will get hot, or mad, or sad, or horrified, or bowled over by Berger's writing. Or maybe all of these. You will not be unmoved.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, This review is going to be a nasty one.

Let me start off by saying that I blame 50 shades of shit. I blame that book for letting authors think that it's okay to have controlling,stalking,abusive men in their books. This is not erotica this is just disturbing. First off I don't think any erotica book should have a 16 year old girl as their main character. I can understand Myra feeling horny all the time considering her hormones and what not. But the way that she is acting is NOT normal.

Lets start with the first incident that should have given Myra the red flag that Elijah was a fucked up person: After Myra meets Elijah on the beach she decides to go back to his hotel room. (idiot move) When she gets in the hotel room she has to use the bath room. When she comes Elijah is standing there NAKED... I would have ran away right at that point. But then again I would have never went into his room. Anyways continuing on, he then pushes Myra on the floor and PISSES ON HER.... WTF?? I almost had to stop reading this book right at that point because that was so disturbing. But, for the sake of reviewing I continued on.


From this point on in the story Myra becomes a whore. The next time that she see's Elijah is when he decides to come to Canada to visit her. He STALKS Myra by showing up at her school. Now this next part is actually pretty damn funny because it's just weird. Myra then decides to walk over to Elijah and give him a hand job IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET...................... Lovely.


Now, my feelings for this Elijah rapist character is very negative. First off he is like 30 years old and Myra is only 16. That would be the first problem. Elijah is gross, he has this "girlfriend" Gayl who is perfectly fine with him abusing her. Not only that but he is beyond controlling. Anything he tells Myra to do, she does it. He also enjoys raping 16 year old girls.

Myra is just stupid. She is really an idiot.. After Elijah has pissed on her, Stuck a flute in places it does not belong(EW), stalked her at school,had Gayl beat her up,and many other things, she STILL comes back to their apartment. Total idiot.

I did not understand the whole point of the conversations that Lee and Gayl were having on the side. It did not add anything to the story for me it was actually pretty annoying and I started just skipping over them because It was very annoying.

Now here is where Myra's real whore-ness starts showing. When Myra finds out that Elijah and Gayl are using her to make porno's SHES OKAY WITH IT! After the first time she makes a porno with them, she decides to come back to their hotel because she wants to make another one. When she gets there Gayl starts beating her up(Elijah and Gayle have some weird fetish of having sex with virgins and then beating them up..), and I guess she passes out and wakes up under a table dazed and confused and most likely raped. She doesn't even try to run she just climbs in bed with Gayl Like its okay that they did that to her!!! Then the police show up at the apartment and arrest Gayl and Elijah, and that is where the book ends.


My rating: 1 star out of 5. The only reason this book deserves 1 star is because of the fact that Elijah and Gayl went to jail.

[Beverly Akerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

pointless exercise in racist, smutfilled degradation, made all the worse by its literary pretensions. quotes on slavery & dialectics used like renaissance painters' names in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. a more authentic take on coming-of-age teenage girl sexuality can be found in Dirty Dancing (and i'm not kidding!)

Tamara Faith Berger, stick to porn writing. Coach House Books: what were you thinking?

apparently lauded by The National Post and Quill & Quire, which i guess goes to show they really do hate women.

[Evey · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. No. No. No. No.



You just can't write about rape as if it was okay, you know? Because, flash news, rape is SO NOT okay.
The storyline is so awful and creepy and disgusting and disturbing and... Oh my god, I want to bitch slap the author.



Lets just burn this on a big pire and pretend this wasn't ever published.

[Chantale · Rating 2 out of 5]

On vacation in Key West with her family 16 year-old Myra undergoes a sexual awakening which starts with a brief encounter with an older Tanzinian man who tries to masturbate with her. Upon returning home Myra's parents marriage dissolves and her Mom moves to Korea to teach English. Myra starts to explore pornography and changes friends. She discovers that she enjoys masochism and contemplates the slave and master relationship in a year-end essay for school.

Suspend your belief as Elijah and his girlfriend Gayl travel to Canada to be with Myra. The sex gets sordid and Myra becomes obsessed and seems to get off on being a voyeur of her escapades. Her 'good' stoner boyfriend gets left behind as she seeks more adventure and less vanilla sex. Her more mature friend Lee tries to guide Myra beyond her obsession with the sex power dynamic. Interspersed throughout are Lee and Gayl's commentaries, they act as Myra's 'angel and devil' but without adding much introspection.

It gets strange as her peers contemplate Myra's essay, excerpts some of which appear in the book. Myra's sexual awakening becomes anti-climactic and the explosive ending loses its sizzle in its awkwardness. Like what I've heard of Fifty Shades of Grey- you're just reading this for the conclusion (and more literary style) and skimming the sex scenes by the end.

[Luisa Fer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quill and Quire mentioned it as one of the best books of 2012 and I didn't wait two seconds before borrowing it from the library. I was one of the infortunate souls whose curiosity got hijacked by the the fifty shades of shit so I was motivated to read on the same subject told from a superior intelligence.
Interesting narrative form, intriguing, mysterious and original I was satisfied with the book until about halfway through the story. At one point I could no longer believe Myra's age or personality. If there is one thing I can't stand in a story is having a main character become stupid all of a sudden. Stupid is an overused word, an excuse that we spit out to people who don't see eye to eye with us and we are afraid that it's us that are lacking in intelligence, but in this case, I don't use the word lightly: The author tried to mask her character's stupidity by making her cultivated and by doing this she strips Myra of any authenticity.

I hoped to see inside her, for the entire book I waited.

"however, I do admire a writer who writes what she wants without apology.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hated my mother and my father. I was bored with Jen. I wanted to watch porn. I’d found this website for free, it was a service or something that delivered these video clips to your inbox. They were a minute, sometimes more, of these girls getting fucked, like what I saw in Key West but even more extreme, with headings like: asschick, teenwhore, slutgettingcock. Jeff had bawled at the door when the taxi arrived for my mom. Jody gave my mom a massive hug. My father hid out in the basement alone. I let my mom kiss my forehead. Her lips were lukewarm. I watched her struggle into the taxi, that backpack was half of her height. I got a new porno teaser delivered every day.

***

Two things became abundantly clear while reading Tamara Faith Berger’s latest novel, Maidenhead: truly, regardless of medium, smut sells—and in some cases, masks severe literary shortcomings; and I have led a very sheltered life.

Myra, sixteen years old and still a virgin, is on vacation in Key West with her on-the-rocks family—detached, quick-to-anger father, a flights-of-fancy mother, and Jeff and Jody, two siblings that barely register as anything more than background noise. Myra takes an immediate shine to Elijah, a Tanzanian musician with Rastafarian sensibilities and a passion for marking his territory. Elijah is much older, mysterious and predatory in his ways. When Myra returns to Canada, Elijah and his “partner” Gayl follow, sensing in Myra a willing participant for their very physical (and abusive) sexual games. What follows is an economically written exploration of teenage lust and sexuality paired beneath the twin conceits of slavery and revolution, omnisciently commented on by the disembodied Statler and Waldorf-like stylings of Myra’s friend, Lee, and Gayl.

The good: Berger’s a strong writer with an excellent sense of pacing. Maidenhead barrels along at a quick clip; the focus never veers too far from Myra’s increasingly raging sexual obsession and the impact it has on those around her. The single greatest achievement of Maidenhead is Berger’s ability to sell the spiral Myra seems so eager to travel to the bottom of without it feeling forced or overtly melodramatic.

The bad: There’s no point to any of it. Myra, at the end, is little more the child she was in the beginning. She’s learned no lessons, embraces no change or outside-herself perspective. When in the end she states, ‘It was this totally backwards and inspired allegory about masters and slaves,’ one gets the sense she’s reciting it as a high school student would a book report for a title they were forced to read, hands bound, decision already made for them. She’s a construct for discussion, and not by any stretch a fully fleshed-out character. No one in Maidenhead, as a matter of fact, qualifies as anything more than an idea used to sell a thesis that sadly never comes together.

Smut sells. This is an absolute, a fact of our society. The more prevalent it is, the greater access there is to it, the sharper the addiction, the obsession, and the confusion—especially in a less-than-mature mind. Unfortunately, Berger’s exploration of this master-slave dichotomy through Myra’s sexual “awakening” and her embracing of pornography falls short of its intended impact, being less literary and more needlessly gratuitous. All shock, little substance.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love Tamara Faith Berger's work. When I read her first book "Lie with Me" more than ten years ago, I remember feeling grateful. It proved to me that it was okay to write about anything I wanted, be it sexual, deviant, dark or just plain odd. Maidenhead is intelligent quirky smut at it's best. A highly stimulating read...

[Lisa Nikolits · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger and while this certainly isn’t a book that everyone will love or embrace, I was enthralled.

Sixteen-year-old Myra’s fascinated exploration of pornography and the slave/master relationship coincides with the breakdown of her parent’s marriage; her world is being rearranged around her while she struggles to find her voice and self identity.

The nihilation of familial stability comes at a time of vulnerability; Myra is alone – her mother has gone to Seoul and she isolates herself from those who could help her.

But she doesn’t want help; she says “It was my conscious intention to trespass into a forbidden field of behavior.” But she is sixteen, she is raw and willing to pursue the path that she tells herself she wants.

Can it be that she is angry – faced with the loss her mother she feels abandoned

Maidenhead can easily be interpreted as a porn missive in a literary wrapping but I think it’s so much more that that; it’s the psychological study of a girl at a fragile moment, a girl who literally opens her arms to an obsessive and violent relationship with a Tanzanian musician and black woman artist from Kentucky.

Perhaps this is in part an attempt to fill the emptiness left by her mother: she has been abandoned and angry, she will take this even further, distilling every relationship to that of slave and master and seeking the purest, most visceral expression of that – porn.

Myra says: “Sublation meant cancelling out and preservation; both, together at the same time.”

There are times in life when the world shifts gears on us and our responses don’t come down to fight or flight; there’s the desire to disappear and yet survive. To my mind, this is Myra’s story of doing just that.

In terms of prose and characterization, I found Myra utterly convincing and compelling and I was touchdd by her precocious naivete and her sense of conviction. I enjoyed her funny and sweet humour and her studied self-consciousness.

Gayl was fearsome, I found Elijah less compelling than Myra but I feel that her quick addiction to him was less because of who he was per se than because of the need in her that he fulfilled.

At a time of loss, loneliness and sexual awakening, Myra manifested the perfect wild couple with which to explore the boundaries of sex and power.

The imagery was sharp and tangible, sculpting lyrical descriptions of what could easily be voiced as base acts.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Because this book has high literary aspirations and a Coach House pedigree, my initial thought was that I "just didn't get it" but it is, in fact, a profound and meaningful story. On further reflection, I remember that I'm reasonably intelligent and decide that this book is really sophomoric crap disguised as profound sexual exploration. And really unsatisfying sex -- dirty (as in unhygenic), abusive, exploitative, unsatisfying sex. With poorly formed stereotypes as characters. So overall, I didn't enjoy it that much.

[R · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not the book you would want to read and write an essay about for your summative assignment for English class.

Personally, I found it repulsive and I did not like Myra (the protagonist) at all. On that note, I did not like any of the characters.

Looking at it in terms of theories, a Feminism or Marxism lens would be useful but I do not think this genre is one of my preference.

[Sandra]

DNF, no rating.

This was very, very weird. The inner voice of the protagonist is odd, and the constant interruptions by the two people commenting via dialogue was strange, something I've never before seen in a book.

This book was not for me.

[MARQUETTA]

I will admit that I decided to read this book because the title intrigued me. With the title Maidenhead, a book is sure to grab your attention. Unfortunately this book did not work for me on so many levels and after reading 37%, I had to put it down. I have no idea what the author was trying to accomplish with this book. Whatever it was, it went completely over my head.

I didn't get or understand this book at all. Maidenhead is told in the 1st person POV (Myra) and it's written like it's stream of consciousness. At some point, I'm wondering if she's high or drunk because her thoughts are so scattered.

Myra is 16 years old and is on vacation with her family at Key West when she meets Elijah. Elijah is Tanzanian and he's older than Myra. They chat and then he convinces her to walk back to his room where he proceeds to force her to pee and then make sexual advances towards her which leads to him peeing on her. Yeah, I said pee on her. He did an R. Kelly. I was going to DNF the book at that point but figured I'd continue reading and hope that the book gets better. Wrong. Myra returns to the scene of the pee crime because she really likes Elijah code word: she's horny, and wants to see him again. She returns to his room where she catches him in the act of going down on a woman. A woman who Myra saw coming out of the bathroom bleeding, holding a towel between her legs. Huh? This is when the book gets even stranger (if that's even possible) and I had to DNF at the 37% mark. It was hard to follow, disturbing to read and again, I didn't get it.

And to make Maidenhead even more weird, mixed in with Myra's POV, we are interrupted by lee and gayl who are "narrators" of the story? I have no idea. Whenever they showed up in the story, it broke up the flow of an already confusing narration.

Another thing that bothered me and this is a personal issue for me, is that the "bad" , the guy who Myra wants to give her virginity to despite her already weird encounters with him, is Elijah, an African guy from Tanzania. And Gayl, Elijah's paramour, is also black (or African). These two infiltrate Myra's life and not in a good way. The stereotype was so blatant and it really bothered me. I thought we were more evolved where we didn't have to fall back on played out stereotypes of white and black. Am I being too sensitive because the bad black people lure the innocent white girl over to the dark side and corrupt her? Maybe I am but I didn't like it and it's another reason why I DNFd this book.

I have no desire to pick this book back up and finish it. The plot was hard to follow, Myra's POV was incoherent at times, it was just a mess. And the sex scenes I did read were just plain gross. If this was a simple

[Patrick Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read a review of this that called it "Fifty Bajillion Shades of Grey," and while I only read the first few pages of Fifty Shades, I can see the similarities. Both are erotic concerned with female sexuality and control and freedom and how that sexuality manifests itself. There are probably other similarities, but not having made it far into the one book, I can't elaborate on them, but I'm going to guess that E.L. James never busts out the Hegel in her book.

Maidenhead is the story of Myra, a sixteen-year-old Canadian girl who uses the occasion of a disastrous family vacation to Key West to dive headfirst into her own burgeoning sexuality. She becomes enthralled with a Tanzanian man named Elijah. Elijah follows Myra to Canada where her family is dissolving, and seduces her. Sort of.

I haven't really any idea how I'm supposed to feel about Myra's relationship with Elijah (and his girlfriend, Gayle). It's not purely exploitative, though one could easily argue that exploitation happens. It's not exactly abusive, though there is abuse. While Myra becomes more and more involved with Elijah and Gayle, she simultaneously composes an essay about sex slaves, pornography, and freedom. Does this sound confounding? Because it sometimes is.

What most interests me about this book, though, is the meta-commentary happening throughout. At first, the two people commenting on Myra's adventures and misadventures seem like deities or extra-textual characters, but this is not the case. One of them is Lee, Myra's new friend, and the other is the aforementioned Gayle. At times, they have omniscient knowledge of Myra's thoughts, feelings, even where the plot is heading. What does it mean?

My take is that female sexuality comes, at least early in life (and maybe, sadly, always) with a healthy dose of judginess from your friends and enemies and frienemies, and then with the accompanying shame. Lee and Gayle don't just comment on Myra's actions, they attack her. Each of them takes turns critiquing Myra's choices. Neither of them seems wholly comfortable with what Myra wants to become, sexually. As a reader, there were moments when I found myself agreeing with them, a part of their chorus. And then I felt bad about that. So their commentary made me feel complicit in a systematic critique of how and why Myra liked to get fucked. Does that make sense?

This is a very cerebral erotic novel, and I suspect it will be with me for some time to come.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 Star
This erotic novel was apparently “critically acclaimed”, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why. We start out with a young girl who is determined to loose her virginity. While on a family trip to a tropical location she spies this older Rastafarian man screwing another woman. From then on out all our heroine wants is this man. He follows her back to Michigan with his girlfriend and proceeds to give her an erotic education. The funny thing about this book is that no matter how much I didn’t like it, or how disturbing I found it, I had to keep going back for more. I had to see if this girl ever recovered from her death spiral. Most erotic novels have a handsome experienced man who cares or at least shows affection for the heroine. The title takes the opposite view of an impressionable young woman falling prey to a man. It’s almost like reading a novel where the male character discovers the pit falls of drugs and never recovers.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book felt like a combination of an undergraduate paper on power dynamics and politics, and a BDSM novel, but not in a good way. I didn't feel that the long italicized sections on the Hegelian master/slave dialectic really contributed to the story, and the plot jumped all over the place.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

So. We spend 175 pages wallowing in a violent, porn-fueled fantasy world. The main character gets beaten to a pulp (but doesn't particularly mind) and then a group of high-school kids use their reading of Hegel and George Bataille to debate whether it's degrading or not. Really.

[Jacqueline Valencia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most accurate portrayal of teenage girls' journey in sexuality. I encourage all women to read it. No holds barred. Very liberating. I'll eat this book up.

[Merary · Rating 1 out of 5]

REVIEW TO COME SOON.

[Kara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this story on a whim without knowing anything about it. Jezebel put out a 2015 Summer Reading List and their entire blurb for this book was:

This was BY FAR the most divisive, controversial novel my book club read this year. There was actually screaming at our meetup.

So I wanted to find out why. This was probably my first mistake, as I feel it's a little unfair of me to rate this so low when, had I known what it was about, I probably wouldn't have read it?

Maidenhead is about sixteen year old Myra, whose parents take her and her siblings on a last family summer vacation before separating and eventually divorcing. My parents took me on one of those, likewise to the beach. Unlike my family vacation, however, I was not approached by a Tanzanian man playing the ocarina who lead me to a hotel room and proceeded to pee on my head.

So yeah, that happens very early in the book and does a good job setting the tone. The man, Elijah, calls Myra his "little bitch" which totally turns our young protagonist on, spurring her into a life of constant masturbation and pornography viewing, and then, eventually, wanting to be in porn herself. She develops what I would call an obsession with master/slave relationships, and not just the sexual dynamics, but...actual slaves. She seems to have a lot of white guilt, to the point where I can't tell if she wanted to be with Elijah simply because he was black. At one point she, desiring to be Elijah and his girlfriend, Gayl's, slave, lets Gayl beat her up, as Gayl, a former slave (???) is taking her power back and rising up against a master (Myra). ??? I guess.

I won't bother to summarize the entire book, but I'll try to articulate the problems I had with it, and why I couldn't give it a higher rating...

I skimmed reviews after I finished reading, curious about what other people had to say and what they took from the book, and I found that most people seemed to give it a low rating because of the sexual content, and especially because Myra was only sixteen (and later, seventeen). That didn't bother me at all. I've been reading fanfic since I was fourteen years old, and because people can write whatever they like in fanfiction without having to worry about publishers or a national audience of critics (unless you count, y'know, tumblr users), they'll write anything. I've read some really weird, kinky stuff. I was in two fandoms where sibling incest was normalized (guess which ones). Most sex stuff isn't very controversial to me, because I've seen it all. That doesn't mean I enjoy or want to read all of it; I'm just not shocked by it. My one big Nope in this book is actually something I haven't seen anyone on goodreads mention - and that's a scene where Myra's friend, Lee, describes in detail about how she was molested as a child. That, for me, was hard to read.

I also want to comment on people comparing this to 50 Shades Of Grey. I don't personally believe there's a real comparison beyond the fact that Myra fantasizes about being tied up, and briefly in one scene she's described as having her wrists tied behind her back. The main problem with 50 Shades is that it completely misrepresents the BDSM lifestyle, as women (or subs of either gender) are not abused in a true dom/sub relationship. Maidenhead never claims or tries to represent that kind of sexual relationship, so there's really no reason to bring it up.

Honestly, my low rating comes down to the fact that I found Maidenhead a bit boring, especially for such a short book. I wasn't interested in or emotionally connected to any of the characters - I found the super intelligent stoners intolerable, half the time I felt like Myra was just completely mentally unstable, I don't even know where to begin with Elijah and Gayl? I didn't understand the book / philosophy references. Ultimately, I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to take from it, because it felt like more than just a story where you can enjoy it for what it is. I wasn't moved by it, it didn't open my eyes or think Deeper about sex or anything. I will say that I thought the writing itself was very good, in terms of narration. Unfortunately, though, I just couldn't connect to this story.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maidenhead is dark and thrilling and offensive and hot and pretentious and thought provoking. I couldn't stop reading it, I read it compulsively, while I was walking, eating, instead of sleeping. It's complex and difficult to parse; it lingers with you, the kind of book that effects the texture of your world for a bit after you read it.

Myra, the 17-year-old at the center of the story, desires, she wants, with the single-focused intensity of children and the infatuated, and she is both. Part of me says, how wonderful, in a way, to be confronted with a girl who, by her own accounts, is complicit in her own depravity, and in that way, owns it. Not just complicit, craves to be split open, to be gleefully punished, ostensibly for her own privilege (but likely for something much more mundane and tender, like her mother leaving or her father's present-absence). Part of me says, but, don't most of us tell ourselves that we are complicit in some way, in our own undoing, if only to give ourselves an illusion of control?

Though I'm confused about my take on Berger's use of the slave-master dialectic, disturbed and provoked by the way race is both examine and used in the book, I am more straightforward in my love of her depiction of a teenage girl's confusing, porn-colored, depraved, unsentimental burgeoning sexuality. It is one depiction that feels like it holds one reality -- a reality colored by a hypermediated, hypersexed North American world -- and it is a depiction and a reality that do not get explored often enough, and certainly not with such open eyes. Totally flawed and totally entrancing.

[Staci Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot of really bad reviews and I think many of them come from either readers of erotica being confused by the literary fiction or the readers of literary fiction being confused by the erotica. As a reader of both, I felt this book was interesting, thoughtful, and all around a good read. I found the two main problems with the novel to be 1) a very rushed, to neatly tied up ending and 2) Myra's final paper. It seems very unlikely that a seventeen year old would write Myra's paper in the first place, but if she did there is no way, absolutely no way, she would get a C on it. She would get an A- likely based on her reading list alone.

The book is definitely not one for the easily distracted or for the faint of heart. It is a rough read full of totally unsexy sex that is very hard to swallow (especially for those with feminist leanings). I looked at the sex very much as more of a metaphor than as anything condoned by the author and as being unnerving on purpose. The book opens up interesting thoughts on oppression (both of POCs and women), class, race, gender, sexuality, and especially the constant obsession with the Madonna/whore dichotomy so expected of teenage girls.

[Nicola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be very disturbing. The subject matter was difficult for me. Slavery and child pornography is not my usual reading matter.
While I felt I was supposed to be upset with Elijah and Gayl I was really more disappointed in Myra and her family. I understand that teenagers can be easily manipulated, but I felt that Myra went seeking trouble - and neither parent bothered to look out for her. I am not sure how a pornography show can be charged to a room without anybody noticing. Nor how a 16 year old can be punched in the face, and parents think it is a "sunburn". No one was looking out for Myra - so she walked into a horrible situation.
I found the story to be disjointed and missing a lot of information. Maybe that is what Berger was going for, but it did not sit well with me. I never truly understood most of the relationships, nor felt I truly got to know any of the characters. Perhaps that is a good thing - I hope I never understand the monds of people who exploit children in order to create and sell pornography.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange one. For me, strange does not necessarily mean bad, but there were parts of this book that were bad. Not badly written, just... bad feeling. This is a synaesthetic experience of a read - it's sticky and uncomfortable and hot and salty and itchy, sand-in-the-bathing-suit-bottoms uncomfortable. Myra - the teenaged protagonist on vacation with her family - is not an easy character to like. She's selfish and out-of-body; she acts like an adult woman sometimes, and so I was often thrown for a loop. There are questions of liability, legality, and moral rightness (or wrongness) at play here, too, which become more evident as Myra's raging (the term "blossoming" is so grossly incorrect here) sexuality bursts forth from her and she pursues the (much older) man of her (bad) dreams. At the same time, Berger is tapping into a side of sexuality that women don't often acknowledge - outside of or within themselves. The angry, sticky, humiliated, corporeal side. I don't mind reading a book and finishing feeling disquieted, and that's what happened here.

[xenu01 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I keep stopping and starting my thoughts on this, so it will be disjointed. Sorry.

I mean, I kind of feel like everyone in Myra's life is suspect, and I saw a lot of my own teenage sexuality, like, of course you go back to the hotel with the man you just met because you do not have it in your persona, in your vocabulary, to say no to someone when they have chosen you. When they desire you.

But what is the thesis of this book? Is this book about a girl being educated about her own privilege? About her own status as a "master"? Well, if so, it does a shitty job at doing that because there is a huge power differential (physically, too) between Myra and the people allegedly educating her. Is it about how, when people do terrible things to us, we rationalize and tell a story in which we choose what happened to us, to make us feel better?

God, I hope so. Because if the voice we are most supposed to believe at the end is Gayl's, then I just wasted seven days of trying not to sexually harass my coworkers by reading this in front of them.

[dean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intriguing. A family vacation becomes the catalyst for the teenage daughter's sexual discovery and the parents' divorce. Berger is not afraid to be provocative and probing and, regardless of my personal feelings about it, I have to give credit to her rendering of Myra's sexual awakening and desire -- the confused depravity and joyful desperation is unexplored territory with a character this young. I was also interested in the structural choice to interrupt the story with interjections from Lee and Gayle. The philosophizing and political talk in the later half of the book works less well and comes off as forced and heavy handed.

It's hard to ignore just how repulsed I felt throughout the book. I felt this way about Lolita too. Some reviewers may find this book "hot", but I thought Myra's sexual life was not a reaction to anything positive but a path to self destruction and a reaction to her molestation/assault and the collapse of her parents' marriage.

[Don Hackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very good and disturbing book. A 16 year-old Canadian girl on vacation with her family in Key West meets a Tanzanian man and his Afro-Kentukian woman partner and becomes obsessed with losing her virginity to the man as he engages in degradation-tinged sexual provocations with her. She returns home to find her parents have decided to separate and that the couple has followed her. Her courtship dance continues as she tries to find meaning and liberation in the relationship through Hegel's dialectic of master and slave.

Not quite as gut-wrenching as her earlier novellas, recently reissued as Little Cat, but visceral enough. Part of the wrench is the ongoing dialectic between the dangerous and degrading situations she places herself in, and her sexual arousal (the book is her first-person narrative.)

[AliceinWonderland · Rating 3 out of 5]

- A very interesting read...
- I actually did not find myself getting much into it until the latter half, when Berger's themes of master/slave, shame vs. consciousness, the economics, politics, class warfare of sex & porn etc...really came to fruition.
- It really made me think and the reader can understand or see Myra's conflicted feelings of empowerment, taking charge of her sexuality & what she wants vs. feeling used or abused by Elijah & Gayl.
- It was not just a typical"coming of age" story about a sexually curious teenage girl...Berger has a lot of things to say and as I reader, I respect that.
- It can be uncomfortable for some, but like Mario Vargas Llosa has said, GOOD FICTION SHOULD MAKE YOU UNEASY.
- So if you're looking for something different & edgy, I would recommend this book. It's a quick read.

[Nadège Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maidenhead was raw, exciting, and honest. I found the main character, Myra, a great feat as well. I haven't really read up on too many books like this, but for a first I'm glad I gave this one a try. Berger delved deep into the mind of a teen girl, and as much as the world hates admit it, sexuality is a big thing during the teenage years–it's the time for experimentation. Nothing was held back; the monologue was explicit, but it was all factual, and surprisingly interesting. I was confused at first by the way two characters seemed to narrate scenes, and because of this it took me awhile to understand anything. But as the story progressed and the characters were revealed, I began to love the strangeness of it. Maidenhead was very original.