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In for a Penny
Penny Birch is back, and naughty as ever. In for a Penny continues the story of her outrageous sex life and also the equally rude behaviour of her friends. From stories of old-fashioned spankings, through strip-wrestling in baked beans, to a girl with unusual breasts, it's all there. Each scene is described in loving detail, with no holding back and a level of realism that comes from a great deal of practical experience.
- GenresErotica
240 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 27, 2009
In For a Penny is the second title by "Penny Birch" that comes my way, and now I realize that the series of books under this pen-name are all interconnected by the common set of characters that (re)appear in them. (Not quite sure I appreciate this marketing ploy.)
The stories in this volume start off promisingly enough.
In "A Perfect Example" the porn-within-porn motif is a creative touch, when Penny finds herself unable to control her urge to browse the girly magazines she discovers hidden under the flowerpot. Her need to use the material to get herself going is the author's playful wink-wink to the reader who's holding In For a Penny in their hands. Penny’s descriptions of the photos in the magazine she is browsing through add another layer of heat to her story.
In “Justice”, I commend the author for being able to stretch the description of the removal of the sub’s underwear to a text spanning 4 full pages, even though it’s not something that I have the patience to read through – or maybe that’s exactly the point, teasing the reader as well as the sub with its slow and meticulous descriptions.
But... following the meta-porn elements of the initial stories, I find that the remaining the stories devolve in quality of presentation.
In the stories with flip endings, where the protagonist of the story comes face to face with an unexpected truth not known to them until the very last lines of the story, I felt that these plot twists have potentional but are not executed successfully. Sweet Charity, Cindy, Getting into Trouble, The Story of the Ice Princess, The Malice of Satyrs – in all of these the turnarounds come in one or two sentences, so that each story ends there somewhat abruptly.
A criticism I had of several stories: Too often the adult characters get all worked up about being ‘rude’ or about being humiliated by indulging in ‘rude’ thoughts/activities and it happens so often it isn't particularly convincing. (I was greatly tempted to do a word count for 'rude' 'rudest' etc to see how often it turns up.) I would have liked it if there was a greater variety to the way the adults experience 'humiliation', not just in terms of exhibiting 'rudeness' or 'naughtiness' (which I interpret as infantile responses). It’s only in the teenage schoolgirl Susan James’ story "Sulky" that 'rudeness' is appropriate age-wise, but by then I’d come across the word so many times in the preceding sections I was no longer interested in the concept.
The prevalence of the ‘rudeness’ theme also manifested itself in the numerous times that the sex became ‘dirty’ by its direct association with other bodily functions...urination, lactation, & even the molasses & baked beans used in the wrestling pit in “Mucky III” – details which gave a infantile overtone to an otherwise satisfactory story.
“Fille Farci a la mode d’Epineau” seemed like it was going to go someplace with the (Freudian) relation btwn sex & food/elimination, but at three pages long this segment just didn’t have time to develop in depth, and so the eschatological theme didn’t venture beyond a child’s level of fascination.
In “The Malice of Satyrs” again the brief length and lack of plot development is unsatisfactory. That there is no dialogue or communication between Poppaea and the satyr is a refreshing change in narrative style; the sex is described in its elemental form withouth the Victorian/Freudian overtones. It's not so clear who's really in pursuit of whom; for this element the story intrigued me. But again, at the end the narrative petered off, and I wish there was more to it.
Finally, the closing segment “An Extract from the Memoirs of Colonel Bufton Bis” is a puzzle, in terms of what it’s about or why it’s included in the collection.
It may be that these stories are a smattering of segments edited out of other "Penny Birch" volumes, hence the sense of incompleteness to the segments, and to the collection as a whole. I don’t feel the pieces are ‘stories’ in their own right, more like seconds or remainders edited out from the works to which they refer.
The stories in this volume start off promisingly enough.
In "A Perfect Example" the porn-within-porn motif is a creative touch, when Penny finds herself unable to control her urge to browse the girly magazines she discovers hidden under the flowerpot. Her need to use the material to get herself going is the author's playful wink-wink to the reader who's holding In For a Penny in their hands. Penny’s descriptions of the photos in the magazine she is browsing through add another layer of heat to her story.
In “Justice”, I commend the author for being able to stretch the description of the removal of the sub’s underwear to a text spanning 4 full pages, even though it’s not something that I have the patience to read through – or maybe that’s exactly the point, teasing the reader as well as the sub with its slow and meticulous descriptions.
But... following the meta-porn elements of the initial stories, I find that the remaining the stories devolve in quality of presentation.
In the stories with flip endings, where the protagonist of the story comes face to face with an unexpected truth not known to them until the very last lines of the story, I felt that these plot twists have potentional but are not executed successfully. Sweet Charity, Cindy, Getting into Trouble, The Story of the Ice Princess, The Malice of Satyrs – in all of these the turnarounds come in one or two sentences, so that each story ends there somewhat abruptly.
A criticism I had of several stories: Too often the adult characters get all worked up about being ‘rude’ or about being humiliated by indulging in ‘rude’ thoughts/activities and it happens so often it isn't particularly convincing. (I was greatly tempted to do a word count for 'rude' 'rudest' etc to see how often it turns up.) I would have liked it if there was a greater variety to the way the adults experience 'humiliation', not just in terms of exhibiting 'rudeness' or 'naughtiness' (which I interpret as infantile responses). It’s only in the teenage schoolgirl Susan James’ story "Sulky" that 'rudeness' is appropriate age-wise, but by then I’d come across the word so many times in the preceding sections I was no longer interested in the concept.
The prevalence of the ‘rudeness’ theme also manifested itself in the numerous times that the sex became ‘dirty’ by its direct association with other bodily functions...urination, lactation, & even the molasses & baked beans used in the wrestling pit in “Mucky III” – details which gave a infantile overtone to an otherwise satisfactory story.
“Fille Farci a la mode d’Epineau” seemed like it was going to go someplace with the (Freudian) relation btwn sex & food/elimination, but at three pages long this segment just didn’t have time to develop in depth, and so the eschatological theme didn’t venture beyond a child’s level of fascination.
In “The Malice of Satyrs” again the brief length and lack of plot development is unsatisfactory. That there is no dialogue or communication between Poppaea and the satyr is a refreshing change in narrative style; the sex is described in its elemental form withouth the Victorian/Freudian overtones. It's not so clear who's really in pursuit of whom; for this element the story intrigued me. But again, at the end the narrative petered off, and I wish there was more to it.
Finally, the closing segment “An Extract from the Memoirs of Colonel Bufton Bis” is a puzzle, in terms of what it’s about or why it’s included in the collection.
It may be that these stories are a smattering of segments edited out of other "Penny Birch" volumes, hence the sense of incompleteness to the segments, and to the collection as a whole. I don’t feel the pieces are ‘stories’ in their own right, more like seconds or remainders edited out from the works to which they refer.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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January 17, 2009Anthology, part of a spiral started by bookman-8
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews