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Speelse onschuld
Hij was veel te mannelijk om kwetsbaar te zijn. Maar hij stond daar met gesloten ogen, wachtend tot ze hem aanraakte. Ze kwam dichterbij en haar adem beroerde zijn dijen. Hij huiverde. Hij rook naar modder, zweet en zeep.
De jonge schrijfster Catherine de la Tour is niet gelukkig. Haar minnaar James is voor lange tijd op reis en ze mist hem zeer. Om haar zinnen te verzetten, accepteert Catherine een tijdelijke baan aan de universiteit van Cambridge. Maar de rust is daar ver te zoeken. Het instituut is een broeinest van losbandige uitspattingen. Spoedig laat Catherine zich verleiden door zowel mannelijke als vrouwelijke studenten. Van Mike, de sensuele atleet, tot de kleine blonde Maggie en de charmante Fransman André. Wanneer haar relaties met enkele van haar minnaars zich verdiepen, moet Catherine een keuze maken.
Speelse onschuld verscheen oorspronkelijk in de succesvolle erotische serie Black Lace. Het grote succes valt te verklaren door de nietsverhullende verhalen waarin de erotische fantasieën van vrouwen op expliciete wijze worden beschreven.
De jonge schrijfster Catherine de la Tour is niet gelukkig. Haar minnaar James is voor lange tijd op reis en ze mist hem zeer. Om haar zinnen te verzetten, accepteert Catherine een tijdelijke baan aan de universiteit van Cambridge. Maar de rust is daar ver te zoeken. Het instituut is een broeinest van losbandige uitspattingen. Spoedig laat Catherine zich verleiden door zowel mannelijke als vrouwelijke studenten. Van Mike, de sensuele atleet, tot de kleine blonde Maggie en de charmante Fransman André. Wanneer haar relaties met enkele van haar minnaars zich verdiepen, moet Catherine een keuze maken.
Speelse onschuld verscheen oorspronkelijk in de succesvolle erotische serie Black Lace. Het grote succes valt te verklaren door de nietsverhullende verhalen waarin de erotische fantasieën van vrouwen op expliciete wijze worden beschreven.
- GenresErotica
239 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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October 5, 2014
As I remembered from another old Black Lace book years ago, Juliet Hastings can certainly write good sex scenes - and I'm saying that even though the heroine is mostly in couplings with men who aren't my type, one of whom can't say a single word without being annoying. Unlike many erotica writers, she makes very few cringeworthy word choices, though that's not to say there were none at all. (The words 'cock' and 'lodge' in close proximity can't help but evince 'cocklodger', that daft insult which inadvertantly reinforces traditional household roles.)
Typically of the imprint, it contains some interesting and imaginative aspects alongside the odd groan-inducing (and not in a good way) cliches. The latter are mostly in plot points, characters turning up right on cue etc. I suspect that many Black Lace books refer to the authors' other interests and what they wish they were doing with them. Heroine Catherine is a classicist who's translated smutty Roman poet Catullus, (a personal favourite of mine), she is now writing a novel about him and has been appointed writer in residence at a fictitious Cambridge college.
I found it interesting that Catherine is around my age now, whilst supporting heroine Maggie, the postgrad student next door, is around the age I was when the book was written. A lot of attitudes and references were recognisable from my student days, and I was very aware of its being - to paraphrase Nicola Barker on The Yips - a novel of the pre-internet moment. Characters email and word-process, but otherwise life is pretty much just RL.
Confident, horny Maggie is basically 90s-ladette-with-brains, feels she could stand her ground with the girls in lads mags and likes to think that younger guys will never have expected anything like what she'll get up to with them. The book is often surprisingly frank about characters' worries, including comparing themselves with media ideals, in such a way as a contemporary equivalent would surely mention internet porn - which would presumably make the contents of 18 and 19 year olds' heads a bit different from those of 15 years ago.
I'm sure the internet has also made people in their mid thirties less innocent than they might otherwise have been, but Catherine seemed unrealistically naive and inexperienced on a few things, hard to believe given her interest in smutty poetry and the fact she'd been in an open relationship for several years. (I got the feeling that the author may have been younger than Catherine when she wrote this, as despite other similar bits of social realism, there are no references to most of her friends having settled down and started families, noticing ageing, or the sense of quite as big an age gap with a 21 year old. Or, for that matter, what was different when she was an undergrad.) Realism appears in a way that's unusual and refreshing for erotica - and then sometimes vanishes like a continuity error... an hour ago she was really sore from all that sex, and now she's happily going cycling for several hours?
Nearly all the social interactions lead to sex; that's what erotica is for, but it can seem ridiculous here at times, especially with the spurts of realism, or if reading a lot of the book in one go. It reminds me of my thought processes as a first year student, when was the next fanciable person going to turn up, oh, they'll do, thinking like that almost everywhere I went. Except tutors. I had very severe views against the slightest possible hint of flirting with tutors - not that this was ever difficult to stick to given those allocated. That's a big 90s issue that doesn't find its way into Dreaming Spires - no one worries about these junior staff and older students being involved (although no one's directly teaching each other) - but in other ways it's very zeitgeisty. It's one of those artefacts that reminded me why trash can be such fertile ground for historical and sociological analysis.
Typically of the imprint, it contains some interesting and imaginative aspects alongside the odd groan-inducing (and not in a good way) cliches. The latter are mostly in plot points, characters turning up right on cue etc. I suspect that many Black Lace books refer to the authors' other interests and what they wish they were doing with them. Heroine Catherine is a classicist who's translated smutty Roman poet Catullus, (a personal favourite of mine), she is now writing a novel about him and has been appointed writer in residence at a fictitious Cambridge college.
I found it interesting that Catherine is around my age now, whilst supporting heroine Maggie, the postgrad student next door, is around the age I was when the book was written. A lot of attitudes and references were recognisable from my student days, and I was very aware of its being - to paraphrase Nicola Barker on The Yips - a novel of the pre-internet moment. Characters email and word-process, but otherwise life is pretty much just RL.
Confident, horny Maggie is basically 90s-ladette-with-brains, feels she could stand her ground with the girls in lads mags and likes to think that younger guys will never have expected anything like what she'll get up to with them. The book is often surprisingly frank about characters' worries, including comparing themselves with media ideals, in such a way as a contemporary equivalent would surely mention internet porn - which would presumably make the contents of 18 and 19 year olds' heads a bit different from those of 15 years ago.
I'm sure the internet has also made people in their mid thirties less innocent than they might otherwise have been, but Catherine seemed unrealistically naive and inexperienced on a few things, hard to believe given her interest in smutty poetry and the fact she'd been in an open relationship for several years. (I got the feeling that the author may have been younger than Catherine when she wrote this, as despite other similar bits of social realism, there are no references to most of her friends having settled down and started families, noticing ageing, or the sense of quite as big an age gap with a 21 year old. Or, for that matter, what was different when she was an undergrad.) Realism appears in a way that's unusual and refreshing for erotica - and then sometimes vanishes like a continuity error... an hour ago she was really sore from all that sex, and now she's happily going cycling for several hours?
Nearly all the social interactions lead to sex; that's what erotica is for, but it can seem ridiculous here at times, especially with the spurts of realism, or if reading a lot of the book in one go. It reminds me of my thought processes as a first year student, when was the next fanciable person going to turn up, oh, they'll do, thinking like that almost everywhere I went. Except tutors. I had very severe views against the slightest possible hint of flirting with tutors - not that this was ever difficult to stick to given those allocated. That's a big 90s issue that doesn't find its way into Dreaming Spires - no one worries about these junior staff and older students being involved (although no one's directly teaching each other) - but in other ways it's very zeitgeisty. It's one of those artefacts that reminded me why trash can be such fertile ground for historical and sociological analysis.
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