Ugh, so many feelings. I’ve consciously been trying to write shorter reviews, but this is not going to be one of those. It will be spoilerific and angry—also, trigger warnings for rape and suicide. If you’re down for all that, buckle up—otherwise, I have literally more than a thousand other reviews you could read right now. Here’s one of the aptly-titled Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, which is funny and uplifting. Asking for It is neither of those things.

But it is still amazing.

This was the first book in Hannah Witton, Lucy Moon, and Leena Norms’ Banging Book Club, a monthly club of books about sex and sexuality. Since it isn’t out in Canada until April, I ordered my copy from Book Depository in the UK. While they have free international shipping—so, yay!—it took a month to arrive—so, boo! They have a spoiler-free video up, as well as a spoiler-full podcast. I really enjoyed the podcast discussion; it was frank, and it echoes many of the thoughts I had while/after reading.

I read this book just as the sexual assault trial of Jian Ghomeshi is wrapping up. It’s huge news in Canada, and it’s so disheartening how the women who have been brave enough to testify are being dragged through the mud by men and women commentators alike. We continue to view rape and sexual assault as the most circumstantial of crimes and to question and harass people who make these complaints, essentially compounding their trauma. Asking for It is a concentrated dose of this social commentary.

So let’s get into it.

I was confused by Asking for It at first: Louise O’Neill is a fan of in media res, and she dumps you into the middle of Emma O’Donovan’s social life without so much as a by-the-way voiceover introduction. In the first few pages alone we’re strapped into a car filled with teenage girls, and I’m expected to start learning names? And who likes whom? Emma, while not full-on Regina George, is a bit of a Mean Girl, enough that you’re probably not going to find her very likable: she is vain, judgemental, and in some ways very shallow.

This serves a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it’s a way for O’Neill to comment on how Emma has been raised and socialized: many of the adults in her life encourage her to think of her appearance as her social capital, and throughout the book Emma emphasizes that she acts the way she does because she likes being thought of as attractive and fuckable. She reacts with snide jealousy whenever there is the slightest hint that one of her friends might overshadow her in these areas. Secondly, Emma’s characterization belies the portrayal of rape victims as “good” or “virginal” or “innocent.” Rape victims are people, and people are complex. And especially in the case of hormonal teenagers, people aren’t always very nice. O’Neill likes to make us work to sympathize with Emma at first, because she needs to point out that rape is rape is rape—any where, any time, to anyone.

Emma’s character, of course, becomes a central question in the narrative of the Ballinatoom Girl that erupts after her story becomes common knowledge. It’s telling that her closest “friends” are the first to turn on her when the Facebook pictures surface without Emma’s context (or lack thereof). The idea that Emma’s promiscuity and sexually-active lifestyle is well-known among the teenagers of Ballinatoom becomes an excuse—she was, as the title, suggests, asking for it. It’s so important to dispel this idea, for it is one of the ways in which rape culture keeps its claws sunk deep into our society: consent has to be an ongoing process. The fact that someone consented last week, or last night, or five minutes ago, does not imply consent at that very moment. It doesn’t matter how often Emma has had sex with anyone—no one should assume she’s DTF as a result of her reputation.

The fact that Emma herself seems to labour under this misconception is a heartbreaking but all-too-accurate part of Asking For It. The sex scene with Paul O’Brien is sooooo awkward to read … I was creeped out, almost to the point of ripping pages from the book just to make it go away. And it’s not just the rapey-ness of Paul’s actions or the way he treats her like an object to satisfy his lust … it’s Emma’s stream-of-consciousness reaction to what happens. She confides that she actually prefers the sexual tension that happens before sex—she likes being pursued, tantalizing and teasing men, especially in places like parties where others can see how adored she is. This is how she has been socialized to view herself: her self-worth is so tied up in how others value her body. In contrast, she seems never to have had sex for sex’s sake, and so she views that act in a very utilitarian light.

One of the “best” moments in the book happens just prior to the rape scene: Emma victim-blames someone else. Her “friend” Jamie is freaking out about being around a guy who took advantage of her, and Emma is not having any of it:

“It’s happened to loads of people. It happens all the time. You wake up the next morning, and you regret it or you don’t remember what happened exactly, but it’s easier not to make a fuss—”

“But that’s not how it happened.” She stares up at me. “I told you what happened.”

“But I wasn’t there with you, was I? How do I know what really—”

“But I told you. I didn’t want … I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t say no.” I crouch down in front of her, my hands on her shoulders. “You told me you didn’t say no.”

“But—” she shrugs my hands off her and looks at me with such despair that my skin crawls—“I didn’t say yes either.”

So, yeah. Emma pretty much throws the title of the book in Jamie’s face (and Ali literally does this to Emma, later). This is a great demonstration of internalized sexism: our society doesn’t just pit men against women but also women against other women. Although there is clearly an irony factor O’Neill is going for here, the scene also establishes that Asking for It is not about rape so much as rape culture.

So then The Scene happens less than twenty pages after that, and I wanted to flip the table.

I love how O’Neill uses repetition to capture the way that Emma tries to shut out her discomfort. She keeps saying things like “I don’t feel well” and “I don’t know.” This is a harrowing experience: O’Neill pulls no punches, with Emma’s internal monologue thinking all the while about how she needs to behave in order to be perceived the right way. It’s staggering: rather than just “oh, he’s hurting me; I don’t want this” she’s focusing on how she doesn’t want to be thought of as a slut but also doesn’t want to come across as a cold bitch.feel lik

See, it would never occur to me that such things would go through someone’s head while having sex (consensual or not). That’s just not something that my experiences and my gender and privilege have led me to consider. So I really appreciate being exposed to these perspectives. I feel like I have a robust understanding of rape culture and consent, but I still learned a lot from Asking for It.

O’Neill kind of faked me out with The Scene, because it isn’t actually the rape that makes the news: that comes afterwards, and Emma can’t remember it. After skipping a year so that she can focus on the fallout of the entire town learning about that night, O’Neill shows us the many ways in which Emma’s suffering is not confined to that one night. This is the deleterious effect that rape culture has on rape victims.

I could go on at even greater length about the second half of the book. I’ll focus on two things: Emma’s own state of mind, and the way her family behaves.

What really got to me about the second half is how Emma is still struggling to process that night and everything that has come afterwards. When she first sees those photos, she slips from “me” to “the girl”, using this as a coping mechanism. Much later, she describes how she is almost obsessed with looking for “worse” cases online—she doesn’t want to feel alone. Yet even though she has filed a complaint and had people side with her, she still feels guilty. She still interprets a lot of behaviour, even behaviour that might be supportive, as furtive accusations against her.

I am fascinated by that—because this is all from Emma’s perspective, we cannot know what people’s intentions are behind the actions she interprets as blaming her. While some are obviously victim-blaming (like Father Michael, the bastard), others are more ambiguous (like Maggie’s behaviour). At one point Emma comments to us that Maggie seems to expect a cookie for trying to comforting or supportive. It’s an interesting observation and a reminder that even when we think we are being supportive of victims, they don’t necessarily see it that way (and they are under no obligation to).

Then there’s Emma’s parents. The whole scene where Emma’s mother is drunk and off-loading on Emma is awkward beyond belief. I’m like, “What are you doing to your daughter right now?” Their palpable relief when Emma announces her intention to withdraw her complaint is disgusting, culminating in her mother’s ultimate betrayal: “They’re good boys really. This all just got out of hand.”

Seriously.

The most screwed up thing is that a year into this, Emma still believes, on some level, that this is all her fault. Bryan, who initially is horrible to Emma and then becomes her greatest champion, says, “I thought this was your fault,” and Emma confides to us, “It was my fault, but I couldn’t bear for Bryan to think that.” It’s not rational, and there are plenty of people reassuring her that she is not to blame, just like we’re told to do. But you know what? It hasn’t helped.

And I am so angry that people made Emma into this broken person, and I am so angry that our society is such that and people grow up thinking any of this is normal. Because those boys who perpetrated Emma’s rape are victims too—not in the same way as Emma, not on the same level! But they were socialized to act the way they did. Rather than “boys will be boys” bullshit, it’s a case of “patriarchy will make boys be rapists”: women deserve not to be raped, and men deserve not to be raised in a way that tarnishes their respect for women. Patriarchy and rape culture hurts us all.

I want to conclude by offering my thoughts as an educator. Having never been an eighteen-year-old girl, and with sex never really a big part of my high school experience, I can sympathize but not identify with Emma and her group of friends. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that I identified instead with Ms McCarthy, the teacher who notices some other students looking at the photos of Emma on Facebook and sets the legal wheels turning that blow this whole thing up in Emma’s face. Thankfully, I have never had to deal with this particular situation. But I’ve sat where Ms McCarthy sat and listened to children talk about sensitive issues; I’ve had to tell them I can’t promise not to tell anyone else what they share, because I am obligated to report. And there are times when I have felt utterly helpless: sometimes the gulf between you and your students is just so inconceivably vast that even when you’re less than a decade older than them, you can’t cross it.

I love that O’Neill manages to portray McCarthy as a human being, not just a representative of authority, even through Emma’s biased eyes (it’s the little details). McCarthy says all the right things, is clearly trying to be supportive, talks about believing Emma and being there for her. She does what I like to think I would do.

And it’s absolutely completely one hundred per cent ineffective and unhelpful.

Just as I’m angered by rape culture’s existence, I’m upset by the inadequate systems in place to help victims. It’s not for lack of trying, as we see in McCarthy’s rigorous adherence to procedure. But if this is the result, then those procedures are failing the people they are meant to help. O’Neill illustrates how powerless we can be: I like to think that, as a teacher, I can be someone my students would want to come to if they were in this position. But I know that no matter how much they might like or respect or feel comfortable around me, they would still see me as an adult who couldn’t possibly understand what they are going through. (And maybe they are right.)

I don’t have answers for these problems. But we need to be talking about them, and we need to find a way to do better. Hence why I love Asking for It. Certainly it’s not unique in its deft handling of rape, rape culture, and victim-blaming. Nevertheless, there are so many great elements at play that elevate it into a masterpiece (yeah, I’ll use the M-word). It captures the moment in time right now where teenagers leverage social media light-years ahead of adults, and the downsides of this activity. It is brutally honest in the way that rape tears down a person, psychologically, and stops them from building themselves back up.

At its core, Asking for It is about consent. It is a cautionary tale about the way we are failing to inculcate the next generation with what it means to consent, with how to ask for it and how to give it. Those boys were not being good boys, and they should not have done all those terrible things to Emma. Yet Emma’s behaviour, the fact that she did not feel comfortable saying “No”, shows that she clearly hasn’t been given the right tools. She’s eighteen, nominally an adult—and we let her down. We need better sex ed, and we need it now.

So I’ll leave you with those thoughts and this link to Laci Green’s video about consent. And I’ll remind you that there is hope, as seen in the case of two Grade 8 girls petitioning to add consent as an enthusiastic “yes” to the Ontario currculum.

Hmm … tricky.

The Vagina Monologues is the February book for the Banging Book Club, run by Hannah Witton, Lucy Moon, and Leena Norms. It’s also the first book I’ve read for the book club, because I ordered January’s pick, Asking For It, on January 1 … and it only arrived from the UK yesterday.

Anyway, this is a tough one to review, for a few reasons—not all of them having to do with vaginas! For one thing, it’s one of those books that defies library categorization. It was in the non-fiction section of my library, but under 812.54 (which is Literature, not actually non-fiction). It’s a play, in a sense, but it’s based on Eve Ensler’s interviews with real women. So it’s fictionalized non-fiction, albeit probably not in the same sense of the “based on a true story” stories that you see in movies. Similarly, the fact that it’s a play makes it difficult for me to review as a book. I’m not a huge fan of reading plays in general, and The Vagina Monologues is not a straightforward narrative. Rather, it relies quite heavily on the type of performance a dedicated actor (or actors), alone on a stage among a hushed audience, could give. Reading these alone at home with a nice cup of tea was an intellectually fulfilling exercise but lacked much emotional resonance.

That lack of resonance might also be because I don’t have a vagina. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying men shouldn’t read this or can’t understand it. But let’s acknowledge up-front that people without a vagina are going to experience this book in a very different way from people with a vagina, and I can’t begin to speak to how that latter group will experience it. To a certain extent The Vagina Monologues seem reductive—they equate one’s womanhood with one’s vagina. I wonder how many women align their identity that way.

One thing I learned while reading this is how many women have never looked at/seen their vagina—either because it’s, understandably, difficult to do, or something they’re not interested in doing. This isn’t an idea, as a man, I had contemplated before. My junk is just kind of … there … hanging around, when it’s not otherwise restrained, for better or for worse. I see it whenever I’m changing or bathing.

I’m not sure what kind of relationship other men have with their penises. Our patriarchal culture is pretty phallic and certainly places a lot of emphasis on men’s “prowess”, but since I’m not interested in any of that jazz, it isn’t something I’ve thought about too much. Still, in general, men don’t face the same level of body-shaming that women face. We’re encouraged to look fit and sexy and buff and whatnot, but there aren’t the same penalties for non-conformance that there are for women. Moreover, men’s biology and sexuality both are seen as normal things to be proud of and celebrated. Women’s biology is aberrant—women have “extra plumbing,” as if maleness is the default. And female masturbation is still seen in a different light from male masturbation.

So, for all these reasons, The Vagina Monologues as a cultural phenomenon makes a lot of sense. We have a puritanical, patriarchal aversion to discussing female sexuality and genitalia, and we need to change the channel on that—and fast. It’s messed up that young girls grow up thinking their bodies are gross or shameful or unacceptable when they simply are, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Ensler makes it very clear that her vision for the play has grown over time, morphing from a series of “vagina interviews” to a more concerted effort to stop violence against women. Many of the monologues don’t just focus on women’s ambivalence about their vaginas but also the way others have violated or abused them. I mentioned before that I didn’t receive the same emotional charge I might have if I were hearing this performed. Nevertheless, some of the monologues were definitely difficult to read. In particular, Ensler manages to convey how many women who experience sexual violence feel dirty, unclean, or less whole as a result—they feel like they are the ones who transgressed, that even if they were not asking for it, somehow they let it happen. These are ideas I’ve run across before, but hearing them expressed in such a direct way is different.

With this in mind, I understand why Ensler chooses to include slightly more silly-sounding monologues, like the lists of clothing women’s vaginas might wear. It’s important that The Vagina Monologues, despite Ensler’s laudable focus on anti-violence messaging, includes body-positive aspects of vaginahood.

Still … the monologues that put, shall we say, a more spiritual emphasis on the whole exploring-one’s-vagina thing did not do much for me. And I’m not sure how much of that is the book and how much is my own, personal discomfort with embodiment in general. It’s not even vaginas—I’m just not really all that enthusiastic about corporeal existence as a general rule. The most spiritual experiences for me happen when I’m out of my body, engrossed by a book.

This “V-Day Edition” contains letters and materials from participants and organizers of V-Day across college campuses. These testimonials are interesting companions to the monologues proper, as various people explain what The Vagina Monologues or V-Day means to them.

It’s also a glimpse into what social advocacy was like before social media. The Vagina Monologues went viral before going viral was a thing (yay for hipster viralness!); social media makes it easier for these kinds of movements to take off very quickly, but very few of them have staying power. That this book remains talked-about and controversial after twenty years is fascinating, though I’m sad we haven’t seemed to make as much progress on giving women agency over their bodies as we should have. (I’m looking at you, United States, and your crazy hang-ups about old white dudes controlling women’s bodies.)

I can say unequivocally that we need more books like The Vagina Monologues. We need books that celebrate women’s bodies and that offer frank, sometimes joyous and sometimes painful, memories of women’s experiences. We need books that make talking about one’s body something acceptable, not shameful. I’ve got a few other books on my radar that are like that. However, your actual experience with The Vagina Monologues is going to depend a lot on your personal experience, your gender performance, and the way you frame your feminism (if any). Unlike, say, Unspeakable Things, this is not a book I’d recommend to everyone. With its monologues’ mono-topical focus, to the exclusion largely of issues of trans identity, asexuality, and race, The Vagina Monologues might be “feminist” in the way it transgresses the patriarchal norms around discussing women’s genitalia. However, its lack of intersectionality means that it will always only offer a partial, incomplete vision of how women relate to their genitalia. Ensler acknowledges this herself in her introduction (though she kind of handwaves it away as not a problem). Nevertheless, it’s a powerful for what it is.

This book was like tearing the scab off a freshly healed wound. It’s been so long since I’ve had to deal with the shittiness that is evolutionary psychology, and then Naomi Wolf comes along and reminds me of just how terrible it is all over again.

Well, let’s do this.

Vagina: A New Biography is Wolf’s syncretism of Eastern teachings about sex (particularly Tantra) with Western medicine, with a particular focus on the way women in the West regard their vagina. It’s the fifth book in the Banging Book Club, an awesome monthly reads group about sex and sexuality run by Hannah Witton, Lucy Moon, and Leena Norms. I have enjoyed all of the previous club reads, to one extent or another, but I don’t think I can say that about Vagina. What starts as a promising book about women’s relationships with their vaginas—kind of like a more scientific look at the same ideas explored from an emotional angle in The Vagina Monologues—eventually turns into a poor mash-up of biological determinism and evolutionary psychology. Here’s how Vagina went from good, to boring, to bad, to worse.

I was actually very excited to read Vagina, for so many reasons. I was aware that Wolf has been a source, or topic of, controversy in more recent years, but I had genuinely appreciated The Beauty Myth and will stand by the idea that it’s a seminal work of feminist scholarship. I was also looking forward to learning more about vaginas—because I don’t have one, and men don’t really learn enough about them in school! I’m always interested in learning about perspectives that are, by dint of circumstance, inaccessible to me. It was with some exhilaration that I proudly read this book in public, during my flights home from a work trip, as well as in the airport lounge on the layover. I wanted people to see a man reading a book called Vagina—and if it led to any genuine conversations, if I could help people see that there is value in deconstructing stereotypes about gender and what is appropriate knowledge for our genders, then cool. (Indeed, my seatmate on my last flight actually asked me about the book, after we had already struck up a more general conversation. However, at that point I was only a few chapters in, and the book was still good and interesting, so I was much more positive about it than I feel now.)

Perhaps Vagina is so promising because of its context. Wolf opens with a lengthy anecdote about a reduction in sensation felt as a result of pelvic nerve damage—something she eventually fixes thanks to medical consultations and surgery. She expresses her amazement that, if she hadn’t linked the disappearance of her rosy afterglows with a physical ailment, she might not have discovered the problem at all. During this period, she learned more about how the vagina is connected to the brain, and it apparently awoke a deeper curiosity in her. Hence a “biographical” look at vaginas, I guess. And I was totally on board, because as The Vagina Monologues asserted a decade before this book, our society has a hang-up on vaginas. They are a taboo subject, yet beneath the surface, so many of us brim with intense curiosity and fascination. And I agree with Wolf that women have too long have been made to feel dirty or ashamed, and that many of the modern standards of beauty tell women that their natural vaginas are bad and need to be perfumed, made up, even altered, to become acceptable.

Although initially unsettled by the title of Part 1—“Does the Vagina Have a Consciousness?”—and its implications of far too much mysticism for my taste, Wolf’s zealous commitment to scientific language and citing research won me over. I was learning things about female physiology that I hadn’t known. And Wolf explores many of the physical explanations for why many women have difficulty achieving orgasm as expeditiously as men. This whole idea, of course, is hugely parodied and constantly referenced in our comedy: men just want quickies; women need candlelit dinners and flowers and commitment, and then there’s some kind of punchline that is almost certainly misogynistic and sometimes also emasculating. We’re socialized to see women’s needs as unimportant at best and weak or repugnant at worst, without ever really stopping to ask why. So I approve of Wolf attempting to uncover some of the science behind these differences.

Alas, even in this first part, there are moments when I had to pause and blink, and maybe do a double-take. Wolf likes to make a lot of generalizations, particularly when it comes to findings about hormone levels. She begins to mix science with anecdotes:

I experienced some of the “thoughts” of the uterus myself. In 2000, I wrote about how oxytocin had made me gentler, more conflict averse, and basically nicer, when I was pregnant. My uterus was doing some of my thinking for me, in spite of my will, and mediating my consciously autonomous, consciously assertive, feminist brain.

Now, let’s be clear: I have nothing against anecdotes. Interesting stories are the life-blood of non-fiction. What’s problematic here is the way Wolf seems to accord anecdotal evidence the same level of privilege as scientific evidence. She constantly mentions hundreds of responses she receives from people in response to articles she has written, as if this correspondence should have the same weight as lab studies.

It’s very easy to do bad science. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver very recently did a whole bit on this. So a science writer has a duty to her readers to distinguish between reliable and potentially unreliable or flawed studies.

Wolf doesn’t do this. She relies a great deal on studies on rats and uses them to draw conclusions about human sexual behaviour—and yeah, we do tend to study rat brains and then draw conclusions about human brains, but at no point does Wolf stop and remind us that, hey, rats are not humans, and maybe there is more going on here. At one time, she cites a study that had nineteen participants, without mentioning anything about the possibility of small sample size bias.

Worse still, Wolf compounds her habit of mixing science and anecdotes:

I conducted informal interviews with groups of women with whom I met both in person and online. I told them about the possible effects of semen, and then I asked them to remember back to a relationship in which they had at first religiously used condoms, and then … had stopped using condoms. Same guy, same sexual style, same scent: any difference?

I saw looks of shocked recognition cross my interviewees’ faces. “Totally different,” said Julia, a graphic designer.

(Emphasis mine.)



What?? No. Do not do this! Telling people about the effect you want to measure is called confirmation bias, and it is a huge no-no. Entire scientific protocols are designed to avoid this very serious problem. Furthermore, asking people to “remember back,” is fraught with problems—our memories are so very fallible. Taken together, it should not be surprising that Wolf got the reaction she did. It’s like telling people most robberies are committed by shifty guys in ball caps right before you ask them if a shifty guy in a ball cap was lurking outside a jewellery store that was robbed. Chances are they will “remember” the guy vividly, even if he didn’t exist.

(This is is also possibly a case of spurious correlation: if the couples had progressed to a point in the relationship where the condoms came off, it’s likely there were other factors that made the relationship “good” and that could very well be the cause of the better sex.)

Wolf goes on to say:

But I do think it is important to understand what may happen to the female mind when we do take in semen…. When a man comes in a woman’s mouth, she may feel energized; when he comes in her vagina, it can boost her tenderness and, if Meston and Buss are right, help elevate her mood.

Seriously?



Naomi Wolf is seriously telling women that semen has brain-altering properties and they should get themselves more of it. In their vaginas! In their mouths! Just … all the semen. Everywhere.

Look, it is possible that Wolf is right and semen does have such properties. But because of the way she presents these ideas, by conflating possibly-unreliable scientific studies with anecdotal and unquestionably flawed stories, we cannot, responsibly, accept her conclusion. So I’m not saying she’s wrong about semen, or about Tantra, or about vaginal pulses. I’m just saying that her writing undermines the credibility of her explanations. This is not a scientific book; it is a heavily opinionated book masquerading as scientific, and that is something else entirely.

That whole semen thing comes from the last chapter, in which Wolf dispenses advice for how to pay more attention to a woman’s sexual needs. Some of it is cringe-worthy, while some of it is sweet and sensible and probably worth remembering. Unfortunately, Wolf presents this advice as a kind of “lessons learned” from all this scientific research, and I have to take issue with that. Science is great at explaining how things work, but it is not a great tool for deciding why we should do things. I hate evolutionary psychology so much, partly because it is so difficult to distinguish between biological and cultural causes, but also because it tends so dangerously towards biological determinism. It’s true: on me level we’re all just squishy meat robots. But we’re squishy meat robots with a diverse cornucopia of cultures and practices.

Biological determinism is hugely problematic in the fight for social justice. It’s a bedrock of arguments to support oppressive practices. And Wolf demonstrates surprising support for these ideas, and for ideas about gender essentialism. She continually refers to “male” brains and “female” brains as if these are concrete things—they aren’t. It is true that there are sex-linked differences to the brain, but they are far more nuanced and complicated than inferred from Wolf’s casual use. In particular, there are epigenetic factors at work. Plus, neuroplasticity means that cultural influences could potentially affect our brain wiring as well. Wolf is, at best, being irresponsible in failing to elucidate the complexity of the origins of these perceived differences in the brains of men and women. A reader could be forgiven for thinking, from this book, that the differences between the sexes were a settled matter of scientific record, rather than the intense source of debate and further study they continue to be.

I should probably have seen the red flags earlier on. In her introduction, Wolf casually mentions she is going to ignore LGB experiences because they deserve whole books of their own. It was basically a bald-faced “this is hetero white feminism, deal with it” and I remember a few alarms going off when I read it—but I trudged on. In retrospect, considering the other problems with this book, that statement is so much more harmful. Firstly, notice that Wolf doesn’t even mention the T, Q, A, etc. Not everyone with a vagina is a woman, and not every woman has a vagina—but Wolf blithely uses one as synecdoche for the other. Secondly, claiming you’re only going to talk about straight women to “keep things simpler” isn’t just a cop-out; it’s offensive—to everyone. It further “others” queer women, setting up heterosexuality as normative and queerness as deviant—something that can be sidelined for “later books.” It might be less obvious, but I also don’t see this as a great thing for straight women: it asserts a rigidity to sexuality and gender identity that does not necessarily exist. It’s possible to be straight, bi, gay, or ace—but it’s also possible to locate oneself somewhere outside of, in between, or in transition between, these restrictive categories. Wolf seems so intent on liberating the understanding of the vagina—but for who? Why gatekeep?

Wolf is also super-moralistic when it comes to porn. She minces no words as she describes the way “habituation” to porn affects men and women, creating impotence. While I agree that there elements to porn that are problematic and need to be addressed, I just find it so disappointing the Wolf chooses to be utterly polemical here. She talks to a bunch of male (and at least one female) “sexual healers” or whatever, but does she ever talk to a sex worker? To a porn actor? To anyone who makes porn or erotic art? I kind of feel like they have interesting things to say about vaginas and sex, but I guess Wolf wants to discount them.

So I guess what disappoints me about Vagina, to bottom line this already ridiculously long review (thanks for sticking with me if you’ve read this far), is that it tries to be too many types of book at once. It wants to be scientific, but it leans on anecdotes and mysticism. It wants to be mystical, yet it insists on trying to find parallels between the East and the West (and I can’t speak for Eastern practitioners, but I’m sure they are very tired of Westerners coming around and borrowing appropriating their “exotic” beliefs for other purposes). It wants to be empowering, yet it carves out a specific category of “woman” and then speaks only to them. There are some really interesting facts in this book, and even some good science—but these are buried beneath layers of poor journalistic choices.

I want to be clear that I’m not taking issue with the idea or intent of Vagina, just its confused and unsound execution. However, if you read the book and liked it, I’d be happy to have some civil discourse about it in the comments. Or come join us in the Banging Book Club Goodreads group!

As I recently noted on Twitter, there is an uncomfortable amount of talk about inserting stuff into bodily orifices that shouldn’t be inserted there. This is not a book for the faint of heart.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is the third book in the #bangingbookclub, run by Hannah Witton, Leena Norms, and Lucy Moon. Check out the Twitter feed to see what everyone else is saying about Bonk and the other reads (last month’s was The Vagina Monologues). This book club focuses on books about sex and sexuality, and Bonk definitely falls under that category. What the club doesn’t prescribe but Mary Roach does provide is a healthy helping of humour: in the book’s description, someone for The New Yorker describes her as “the funniest science writer in the country.” I was sceptical of such a superlative distinction, but it might be true—and if not, she’s up there on the podium.

If you watched the first season of Showtime’s Masters and Sex you will know, somewhat, of what Roach discusses here. (I say the first season, specifically, because subsequent seasons have drifted further into soap opera territory and farther away from the science side of things—which is fine if you want soap opera, but not really my cup of tea.) Roach gives Masters and Johnson their due, of course, and she mentions other notorious scientists, like Alfred Kinsey. She also illuminates the field, though, mentioning names I hadn’t encountered: Robert Latou Dickinson, and women in the field, like Marie Bonaparte (she of the “I had my clitoris moved…”). And while Roach diligently details much of the history of sex research, she spends a great deal of the book talking about the state of the field right now. I found this very gratifying.

I can’t speak for others (particularly those who live in less fortunate areas of the world, like the United States, where sex ed is paltry or non-existent) but I’ve always just kind of had the impression that our scientific knowledge of sex was pretty thorough and complete. We know, in other words, how babies are made. I knew we were still mucking about with genes and fertilization techniques, etc., but I didn’t pay much attention to other parts of the field. I guess I underestimated how much the pleasurable nature of sex for some people motivates us, as a species, to turn our curious and scientific minds to the process. The truth is, sex research is alive and well—but we just don’t talk about it as much as we should!

Roach seems to have a few clear goals. Firstly, she sets out to demystify and dispel stigma around sex research (i.e., it’s not something scientists do because they have a perverted fascination with sex). Secondly, she tries to explore and explain the field without resorting to too much jargon (her explanations of complicated biological processes and surgical procedures are remarkably lucid and easy to follow). Thirdly, she points out areas of sex that have yet to be studied thoroughly enough. Although short, Bonk packs a punch when it comes to the sheer amount of information and number of topics Roach manages to cover. Also, the chapters themselves are short, making this a very easy book to read a little at a time.

I appreciate the way Roach allays accusations that if you’re interested in talking about sex, or researching it in a lab, you must be a pervert. It seems like this should go without saying in 2016 (or 2008, when this book was written), what with the way we’re saturated in media by sex and sexuality. And hey, everyone wants to talk about sex—I’m not interested in having sex and I still want to talk about it. However, this is the peculiar double standard of our times: we are supposed to be interested in sex just enough, but if we are interested too little or too much, we are labelled as deviant. The amount of interest, and the way it should be expressed, varies with one’s gender, social status, age, etc. Slip up in any way and you get policed. Start talking or thinking about sex too young? Perverted. Someone must have “corrupted” your innocence. Start having sexual thoughts about the sex you’re not supposed to be attracted to in your community? Ugh, perverted! Did you start talking about sex, and are you a woman? The height of perversion!!

I digress. And I jest—one theme that Roach unearths is how women’s sexuality has actually been acknowledged and studied in various ways throughout recorded history. Rather than a clear progression from “women do not enjoy sex” to “women enjoy sex but men don’t care” to “women enjoy sex and men should care,” we see a much more complicated, roller-coaster-ride journey as different societies grapple with the radical notion that women are people, and that they should enjoy their bodies as something other than childbearing vessels. And while we live in a very enlightened and privileged time (what with the Pill and all those fancy vibrators), we still have a ways to go.

For all her openness (Roach is pretty candid about the times she had to volunteer herself as a participant to get access to the goings-on in a sex study), elements of Roach’s humour undermine her attempts to make us stop sniggering about sex. I conflicted about this. On one hand, I think Roach is just trying to dispel our discomfort using humour—by pointing it out and then dismissing it with a joke, we can focus on the science. On the other hand, I do feel like she is somewhat reinforcing the very ideas that she dismisses in her introduction; sometimes her jokes feel like they are implying that these researchers are unhealthily fascinated by what’s going on, or at least that there is something weird and freaky about studying the anatomy and biology of sex in humans. To be clear, I don’t think Roach is deliberately implying that—I just worry it’s a side effect of some of her humour.

Bonk might be one of the most edifying books I’ve read in a while—and I read a lot, a fair amount of it non-fiction. The coy chapter titles conceal their contents well, but Roach covers a vast swathe of sex research. She looks at what we know about the role of the clitoris in orgasm before moving on to wondering what role the female orgasm’s biological manifestations plays in reproduction (answer: we’re still not sure). From there she talks a bit about how we can get a good look all up in there (vaginas; I’m talking about sticking cameras up people’s vaginas), before a few chapters on impotence (male and female) and the ways we can “fix” this (male and female). I say “fix” because Roach does point out that, for some people, it’s not actually a problem, and that there are communities and organizations somewhat concerned by the medicalization of sexuality—especially in women. Throughout this book I was constantly thinking about the controversy around “female Viagra”, a treatment Roach alludes to in the book but that has only recently come to fruition.

This book also taught me many cool science tidbits I otherwise haven’t learned before. Vaginal lubricant isn’t glandular but actually the clear plasma component from the blood that fills the walls around the vagina. How cool is that?

Roach seems to spend roughly equal time on vaginas and penises. For a book about sex, it’s not surprising that the subject falls into such a binary. To her credit, Roach does talk about trans people and gay people here and there—as far as Bonk is concerned, it’s mostly focused on the individual, who might have a penis or a vagina, rather than couples of any particular orientation. I found it most interesting that Roach does not even come near the debate over how biology, genetics, or environment might influence our sexual orientations—though I think she was probably right to stay away from that minefield. Overall, this is a book focused almost exclusively on biological parts of coupling rather than the cultural parts—though I don’t mean to suggest that biology presents us with straightforward binaries either. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go on this front, when many researchers continue to talk about gender queerness in very medical terms and use “healthy” as a synonym for cisgender people. While Bonk doesn’t demonstrate these views, its findings are naturally restricted to what we have studied so far (and the framework around which we study them, as Roach herself points out when she describes the methodologies Masters and Johnson use with gay couples).

That is, of course, the fantastic thing about science. The state of our knowledge is in continual flux: what we know changes every day, every moment, and can make us revise or revisit everything that came before. Bonk represents the state of our knowledge in 2008. It’s far from complete, and I’m sure parts of it are outdated or will be in coming years. But Roach does a great job pulling back the curtain on research into the bedroom, giving her readers a great primer on sex and science and leaving us with the right questions to ask going forward.

I can’t believe we’re into April already and on to the fourth Banging Book Club read! I was very excited when I saw that All the Rage, by Courtney Summers, made it onto the reading list (thanks, Leena!). Courtney Summers is the bee’s knees. Not only was Cracked Up to Be one of my best books read in 2015, but much more importantly, she and I chat on Twitter about Supernatural. It doesn’t get much better than that. So, uh, this review is probably very biased—so biased, in fact, that you should probably just go and read the book to make up your own mind about it!

All the Rage is a quick read, thanks to Summers’ skillful prose, but it is also a difficult one. It’s not just the subject matter; it’s the way that Summers creates situations that force us to confront the presence of rape culture. With each chapter, your heart breaks a little more: it shouldn’t be this way; it can’t be this way—but it is. While this is obviously a story about rape and the ongoing trauma of victim-blaming, this is also a compelling look at the ways in which our society’s attitudes towards adolescence are contradictory and harmful.

Throughout the book, Romy refers to the application of makeup—particularly her red lipstick and nail polish. She explains in detail how to apply it, and adds, “My dad used to say makeup was a shallow girl’s sport, but it’s not. It’s armor.”

I love this line.

I love it for so many reasons. Makeup seems to be such a controversial thing: is it feminist to wear makeup? It’s a debate that’s largely academic for me and one that, by privilege of my gender performance, I get to opt-out of. Nevertheless, it is so easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking of makeup as a shallow or oppressive thing—but it’s not. That’s just makeup as seen by the male gaze; Romy is right, and she says it so succinctly. Life, for women—and even more so for teenage girls in high school—is a battle, which means makeup must be the armor.

Building on this metaphor, All the Rage might be retitled Romy Grey versus the World, because that’s what it feels like: every day, Romy armors up in her red lipstick and nail polish, and she prepares for the worst. She prepares for the taunts and insults and bullying of her peers. She prepares for the unprofessional, abusive treatment from the sheriff. She dons a waitressing uniform and smiles blandly at strangers at a diner, all the while shrinking inside herself and seeing herself as less than human.

This is the pain of being, the ongoing trauma of rape: whether or not one is believed, life just goes on. One is expected to keep living, keep going to school, keep working … as if nothing happened.

Romy’s youth compounds this difficulty, because naturally, she has less independence than an adult woman might. She still has to live at home, still has to go to high school. She doesn’t even have the prospect of escaping the small town of Grebe and going to a bigger city, where no one knows her—at least, she doesn’t seem to view college as a realistic destination. As a teacher, I have to smile at this passage:

After a while, Mr. McClelland comes in. He’s the youngest member of the faculty and he tries too hard. I don’t think I’ll be here the day that finally gets crushed out of him, but it’ll happen. It always does.

This speaks volumes about the atmosphere at Romy’s school and the attitude of the students. This is a small town, as we see from the scenes involving the search party, or Leanne Howard’s fear over losing her job. There are very few places that Romy can go where she won’t run in to someone who is not thrilled to see her.

Meanwhile, the very things that are supposed to be in place to protect her fail her. The police services fail her. Her parents fail her: Mom is sympathetic and tries to reach out to Romy, but she doesn’t know how to relate. Her idea of helping Romy out is buying Romy a “sexy” pink bra—it was fascinating and eye-opening, watching how Romy recoils from the thought of getting it for herself, rejecting the notion that she could be sexy any more.

Adolescence is a hard time, and in some ways, adults make it harder. We inconsistently grant teenagers latitude and independence, but it is a fleeting thing that we have the power to take away. Romy is exposed to all of the harsh realities of the adult world with few of the benefits of it. And the Wake Lake party, the way the adults turn a blind eye towards it as a rite of teenage passage, symbolizes all that is wrong with this paradoxical treatment of teenagers as adults-who-aren’t-adults. Because as painful as it is to see Alek or Tina or Brock treat Romy the way they do, it’s not like they came into those behaviours on their own. They learned them, from each other, from family, and from us.

All the Rage excels at depicting that anger simmering beneath the surface, threatening to boil over, but never quite finding a vent. It does so because Summers very capably writes believable teenagers, from Romy to her antagonists, as well as adults who represent varying levels of nominal and actual authority. In addition to this characterization, Summers’ writing is aching and raw without being melodramatic or over-saturated with angst:

Our beautiful blonde. They cry for her and twist their hands in a way they never would for me. This is what happens when a girl befalls a fate no one thinks she deserves.

or:

I want to bury him. I want to burn a moment of helplessness into him so he can know a fraction of what I felt, what I feel, what’s followed me every moment since, so I You cover cover his her mouth mouth.

and:

You know all the ways you can kill a girl? God, there are so many.

And then there’s Leon. Sweet, kind Leon. We see Romy wonder if he is like Kellan underneath, if he will take advantage and take liberties and finally just take. We see her surprise, almost lack of comprehension, when in fact he refuses to go any further because he thinks she is drunk. Every time she pushes him away, acts out, because she doesn’t feel worthy of his attention, he comes back—and not in a stalkerish, creepy, romantic comedy “I am the One and we are destined to be together” way either. There are misunderstandings, and he is always patient with her, but he also voices his disappointment when she screws up. He, too, is human, and this relationship is, like all teenage romance, fraught with mess.

But the very idea that a boy in a YA novel about a girl who was rape would utter the words, “I think I triggered you” endears Summers to me forever.

Then the ending, with the glimmer of redemption for Tina and the invitation to find that girl in Godwit—I don’t want to say it’s hope, because that is too strong a word. I think we all know the statistics on convictions, the seemingly insurmountable barriers that women have to climb just to have their voices heard. It’s not hope, then—but it is a direction. It’s Romy taking action. Whether she is successful is more up to us than to her.

Asking For It, the January read for Banging Book Club, was also a moving and intense book about rape. There is a great deal of overlap between the two books, of course. Whereas the events in Asking For It were more out in the open and acknowledged—but with blame apportioned differently—All the Rage is not so much about getting justice as it is just being believed at all. While I’m not pleased we need novels like this, I’m pleased that more and more of them are creating diverse depictions of the struggles that women, young and old, face. I hope that they amplify and stimulate conversation about how we can stop this from happening. Rape culture is real. It is not the responsibility of women to “not be raped,” and it is not the responsibility of girls to “behave” and “be good girls.” It is our responsibility to believe women, to listen, and to talk about empowerment and consent.

I’m getting a little soapboxy, but that’s what happens when I read a powerful book. Powerful books should change you, inspire you, motivate you. All the Rage has that in spades. Put it in your hands now.

Are you a perv? Of course you are, you pervy perv, you. At least, that’s the explicit (pun intended) promise in Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. Jesse Bering grapples with that truism that the only normal is that there is no normal. He catalogues, comments upon, and otherwise investigates the various types of sexual behaviours that are or have previously been labelled as deviant. The purpose of this exposé (pun intended), if you will, appears twofold: firstly, Bering wants to remind and reassure that there are more kinds of kink under the sun than just S&M and foot fetishes; secondly, he wants us to understand the mechanisms in our society that have traditionally been responsible for identifying, labelling, and even censuring kinks and sexual deviance.

This is the sixth (!) book I’ve read for the Banging Book Club, run by Hannah Witton, Lucy Moon, and Leena Norms. Each month’s read provides new insights into the facets of sex and sexuality in human society, whether we’re talking rape culture, attitudes towards vaginas, or in this case, fetishes and other deviations from “the norm”. The inevitable comparison will be with Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. While that’s probably fair, I don’t know if it really does either book justice. Bonk is a tour-de-force of the science of sex buoyed by Mary Roach’s intense commitment to the cause (including both interviews and, ahem, participating in some experiments herself if need be). Perv has a similarly journalistic tone to it but feels much more like a review of literature on the subject.

That being said, I don’t want to give the impression this book is boring! Far from it, for Bering writes with a very accessible style. He’s also quite open, which is important in this type of book. He puts his identity, as a gay man, and his agendas up front so the reader knows the biases with which he approaches this subject matter. And ultimately, the tour that he takes us on is both fascinating and educational, albeit at times somewhat lacking in focus.

Perv documents the shift in our views on the permissibility of sex from regulation by tradition/morality to regulation by science. For a long swath of human history, we allowed, controlled, restricted, and demonized sex and specific sex acts based on whether or not society viewed them as “right” or “wrong”. The specific acts that ended up in either of these categories have varied by time and place, but it was always fuelled by morality. People who sexed it up the right way were good, ordinary members of society; people who went off script were bad, immoral, and possibly possessed by demons. As science became more popular and people began to refine the scientific method, its application to the study of human sexuality offered a new opportunity to recodify sexual behaviour through science. Suddenly, perverts weren’t immoral and sexual deviancy wasn’t a matter of character; rather, they were ill, and deviancy had become a sickness to be treated, possibly cured.

The medicalization of sexuality is ongoing. It has brought with it many great benefits, from the Pill, to that other pill, not to mention various ways to work around infertility. Bering points out that the earlier ways of regulating sexuality were prone to inconsistency and arbitrariness. For example, the age of consent varies widely across countries and is based more in our morals than in any scientific consensus on when someone can consent to sex. That there should be an age, or some other marker determining when one is capable of consent, seems not to be in doubt—but no one seems to know how to quantify it in a way that will satisfy all of us. If anything can offer up an answer, however, it might be neuroscience and our increasing understanding of how the brain works.

Nevertheless, there are also many scary ramifications to the trend of medicalization (female “viagra” and the medicalization of lack of sexual desire always comes to mind). Bering, of course, talks about the various attempts to “cure” homosexuality in the twentieth century, as well as the medical community’s approach to nymphomania. The lesson here: what was once the established norm in medicine with regards to sex has changed quite a bit over the past half-century and continues to change still. Even various psychological manuals can’t quite agree on definitions and which “conditions” to include. So while we know ever more about the science behind sex and have better tools available to help us investigate it, we are still debating how to interpret the results.

Perv spends a chapter or two discussing paraphilias and the various modes of attraction. It is entertaining to read about the woman who married the Eiffel tower or people who become aroused by bees. I had no idea how the DSM-5 classified fetishes and the like (and had not really given it much thought, but it’s a cool thing to know). The world of kink is so very diverse, and Bering does an excellent job of pulling back the curtain to help us understand that there are so many different obsessions, fixations, and attractions. It puts paid to the idea that there is an overwhelmingly “normal” or vanilla approach to sex that most people follow, with only a small minority of the community on the fringes. I appreciate the attempt to challenge the heteronormativity of our society.

Probably the heaviest topic Bering addresses is pedophilia. Firstly, he delves into the way that the popular definition of pedophilia has expanded to cover things like hebephilia (attraction to pubescents) and the difficulty this causes in a medical context. Related is the conflation with pedophilia and child sexual abuse (not all pedophiles have abused children, and not all those who abuse children are actually aroused by children). Then he addresses various attempts to screen or measure attraction through penile plethysmography (he doesn’t really talk much about the controversy around this technique). Bering highlights the conflict between wanting to identify and study potential pedophiles and the consequences of a non-offending pedophile outing himself. This reminded me of an article in Matter about self-identified pedophiles who have come together to form a support group because they acknowledge their attraction but don’t want to hurt children. This is the dilemma we have: how can we help people who are aware of their problem, people who don’t want to offend, when we vilify them for existing?

I only wish Perv had grappled a little harder with issues like this. It’s a fine, interesting book—but it’s also somewhat forgettable. I’ve learned from it, but I’m not sure how much detail I’m going to retain (or how much I really need to retain). Bering presents an adequate survey of various kinks and perversions, certainly proving his thesis that “normal” is an illusion. But it doesn’t seem to amount to much. It’s a book with a subject but no appreciable direction to its narrative. If you’re really into the way Bering explains things, this is probably enough. But I could see people having a lot more trouble getting through this, or considering it dry, if they were looking for something a little more engaging.

Each non-fiction book we read for the Banging Book Club offers its own unique window into sex and sexuality. None of them have been a solid 5-star hit for me yet, but every one was interesting in its own way (even if Vagina was somewhat disappointing by playing fast and loose with science). I’m having a good time learning about all these different aspects of the field and picking up books I might not otherwise have found.

I hate listicles. I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t click on any post that starts with a number in its title. I know, I know, #notalllisticles, some are well-written and informative.

A Little Gay History is, when you think about it, a listicle; you could retitle it “82 Objects from the British Museum Related to Gay Sexual Desire”. Listicles were around before the Internet, and I suppose they will outlive the Internet too. I have a few other books that are like this—The Math Book and The Physics Book come to mind. They are much heftier, much longer versions of a similar idea to this book. I always find these types of books difficult to read, let alone review. They aren’t really books in the narrative sense, not even in the non-fiction sense. They are closer to encylopedias—they are, essentially, lists. How do you review it. “Good list”?

As R.B. Parkinson explains in the preface, this book exists in other forms, including a web trail you can view online. The intention behind this book, then, is to bring to the forefront historical objects and art that depict same sex desire. Parkinson makes a lot of good points about how prejudices in history and historians influence the way we think about homosexuality and same sex relations in the past. This is a really difficult topic to discuss, because even the language is weird and filled with bias! A Little Gay History tries to demonstrate that humans have had same sex relations throughout human history, but that the attitudes towards these relations—and the extent to which they were considered “normal” or allowable or on the same level as other types of relations—varied a great deal by geography and period.

Like many books of its ilk, A Little Gay History is beautifully designed. I never went to the British Museum while I was in England (I did visit the Natural History Museum, which was awesome), and I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to go. So it was nice to see the photographs of these objects reproduced in such high quality detail and colour. Parkinson’s write-ups are informative and interesting. They spark a desire to learn more. I really want to read more Virginia Woolf now….

I don’t think I would have picked this up if it weren’t a #BangingBookClub book. If I wanted to learn more about historical attitudes towards homosexuality, I’d probably search out a meatier book with more writing and less photography—but that’s just how I roll, and you might differ. In this case, I got more out of the brilliant podcast discussion than I did from the book itself. Hannah, Leena, and Lucy do an excellent job talking about the issues this book raises—Hannah in particular is in her wheelhouse here, and the two others ask great questions that made me flip back through this book to give some of the pages a second look.

In the podcast, Leena observes that the book makes some pointed comments about Britain’s role in making homosexuality illegal throughout the world. Hannah says that sometimes she thinks of the British Museum as “here are all the things that we [the British] stole” and that gave me a laugh—but it’s also a thought I had while reading this book. There is something ironic about a book focuses on objects from the British Museum to discuss history and sexuality around the world, since Britain and its imperialism has been such a problematic actor in those forums.

I was surprised and amused to discover my library had a copy of this (sometimes my library seems to have copies of the most esoteric things). A Little Gay History is what it says: little, gay, and a history. It’s fine. It didn’t blow me away, but it was a nice enough way to spend the afternoon and made me think about things in a way I hadn’t thought of before.

Ah, it’s so nice when a book blows you away with how awesome it is. I was hoping I’d like Linesman, but I didn’t anticipate loving it so much. But sister act Sherylyn and Karen Dunstall have managed to create an original, exciting new entry in the space opera subgenre. If you like space opera, SF with a psychic twist, or whiny people getting their comeuppance, you should read this book. So let’s not waste any more time and get into explaining why!

Ean Lambert is a certified ten—which is not to say he’s good looking. Rather, he’s the highest level of linesman. Think of linesmen as Jedis who use their Force powers to fix ships instead of having impractical lightsaber battles. Lines, numbered from one to ten, are energy constructs that humanity uses to facilitate their spaceship operations, including, crucially, faster-than-light travel. No one is really sure what lines are; as with many innovations, we just sort of stumbled onto the secret of making them. Most linesmen “push and pull” lines psychically—again, no one is really sure how that works. Ean is an outsider, both in terms of his social background and how his initially self-taught linesmen skills mean he must sing to the lines. To other tens, he is a dangerous imposter of a linesman.

Anyway, to make a long story short: Ean gets caught up in interstellar brinkmanship far beyond his pay grade. At first he’s not happy, but he quickly comes to enjoy his new situation to an extent, because at the very least it’s proving challenging—and someone is actually appreciating him. After years of being shit on for not fitting in, a few people are paying attention to what he can actually do. So everything is looking up for Ean—you know, if you ignore the people trying to kidnap him, kill him, seize control of a strange alien ship before he does … the usual.

The stakes Linesman are high. Dunstall thrusts us into a human society on the brink of war. The universe reminds me a little of Bujold’s Vorkosigan books, with a few consolidated powers loosely controlling a vast array of planets, united by a fragile FTL MacGuffin (wormholes in Vorkosigan, carefully-scheduled “gating” in this book to avoid mishaps). Linesman is also like the Vorkosigan books in that it’s not precisely military SF, but it's military SF adjacent. The relationship between Abram and Michelle, for instance, reminds me a little of the relationship between some Barrayaran military generals and people like Cordelia or Miles. They are both very strategic people with slightly different specialties and occasionally different priorities (Abram wants to protect Michelle, even if she’s not in the mood to be protected).

Dunstall neatly balances Ean’s acumen. He’s not a completely blank slate, but he has largely eschewed politics until now. He has a history with Lancia (Michelle’s faction), having grown up in poverty there and escaped it only because of his skill with the lines. So it’s ironic that he ends up working for them, not just because Michelle buys his contract but because he starts to like them. This sense of humour and playfulness pervades the book and helps to take the edge off what is otherwise a very tense situation.

In addition to following Ean, some chapters follow Jordan Rossi, a more conventional ten. I like this perspective, both on galactic politics and on linesmen’s place in the power structure. Between Jordan and Ean we get a good sense of how linesmen work with the lines—but it’s clear that there is so much more out there that Dunstall have yet to reveal. I love how they gradually dole out that knowledge: at the start of the book, the uses of lines seven and eight are unknown. Ean discovers what line eight does, and he also makes a few other discoveries I won’t spoil here. But the book ends with Ean interrogating line seven about what it does—a mild cliffhanger, perhaps, but a cliffhanger nonetheless. I was well annoyed when I read that last page!

And I so very much want to read Alliance! I have already checked; my library has two copies—one is on hold, so I’m not the only person in Thunder Bay who is enjoying this series. There’s just something so smooth and enjoyable about Dunstall’s writing. Dunstall manages the scope necessary for space opera without forgetting about having great characters. Much like in the paradigm case of Dune, learning about the wider galactic society is an important part of Linesman, but it is secondary to the main plots.

Finally, this story has a wealth of secondary characters who make it so much better. In general, Dunstall gives us a bunch of interesting women in all sorts of roles. Michelle, although royalty, is not your typical princess, and on the opposite side of the political board we get Admiral Orsaya. Rebekah Grimes shares Michelle’s penchant for scheming, while Admiral Katida puts the moves on Ean shamelessly. The best for last, though: Radko, assigned to Ean as a kind of orderly/babysitter while he is aboard, proves essential in so many respects. Not only does she offer physical protection and training, but she is a wellspring of psychological reassurance and support in a way that surprises both of them. I love that Linesman has so many great female characters. Moreover, there were some good, casual comments about fashion and how it has changed since our present day—we’ve got some tight-fitting tops and tights that are all the rage among men as well as women. (Little bit of fat-shaming on Ean’s part, though.) It’s all very subtle but it’s also important to acknowledge.

Of course just as women have always fought, women have always written science fiction. But if any poor, deluded sod was under the impression that women don’t write good military science fiction, Linesman is just another counterexample. This is an awesome new entry into the field; it has excited me about space opera in ways I was not expecting. If you want to feel that, then you got to get a piece of this action.

My reviews of the Linesman series:
Alliance →

I am slowly but surely running out of ways to review anthologies. It’s maddening, let me tell you. #firstworldproblems

What can I say about Trigger Warning? It’s another anthology. It’s another Neil Gaiman anthology. Much like Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things, Trigger Warning has its moments, its trademark Gaimanesque departures into clever flights of fantasy—but it’s just not the form for me. Gaiman waxes poetic about short stories in his introduction; it is clear he loves this form and quite enjoys writing them. Indeed, there are many short stories I appreciate (you might say I have “plenty of friends who are short stories”), but at the end of the day, I like to sink my teeth into a nice, juicy novel. None of this rabbit reading.

Did I mix enough metaphors in that last paragraph?

I’m not going to delve into the controversy around the title or his introductory remarks on it, because it has all been hashed out pretty well (just Google it). I will point out that it’s an interesting continuation on the trajectory begun with his first collection. Illusions, and then the suggestion of disruption and disturbance. Gaiman’s fiction has always been, to some extent, about the way magic and surreal experiences go hand-in-hand with the broken parts of our psyches. Just look at any of his protagonists, even the non-human ones like Morpheus. Gaiman is fascinated by the way our flaws and foibles define us, as a kind of negative space, but he also likes subverting our commonly-held perceptions of those flaws. Thus the hero becomes the villain, the god a monster, the monster a god, etc. While Gaiman is far from the only one to do this, he is quite good at it.

I also enjoy his introductions to these collections. Like Gaiman, I enjoy reading what an author has to say about the origin, inspiration for, meaning behind a story. I feel free to disagree, such as I can, if I want to—but I like having that background. It makes me feel more connected, and in turn I tend to enjoy the stories more.

Most of the stories in Trigger Warning have been published elsewhere. It includes The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains and The Sleeper and the Spindle. While I highly recommend reading the illustrated editions of those stories if you can find them, it is nice to have them collected here as well. This collection also contains “Nothing O’Clock”, Gaiman’s Eleventh Doctor story from Doctor Who: Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories. Although I recalled not being particularly impressed with it when I first read it, I liked reading it again.

None of the stories new to me in the collection stood out for me, however. None of them grabbed me, shook me, said, “This is what a Neil Gaiman short story is all about!” Each is interesting or has a cool premise, in its own way, although that doesn’t always translate to a wonderful story. Each showcases Gaiman’s skills with setting and character and narrative, and maybe others will find the stories speak to them more clearly and emotionally than they do me.

If, like me, you’re just an unabashed Gaiman fanboy, then this is a collection worth getting. It just doesn’t have much to distinguish it, beyond perhaps a couple of stories available elsewhere in even better illustrated forms, so don’t expect too much from this.

This is a book that shouldn’t work, but it does. Magical duels. Revenge plots. Hidden identities. Predictable twists. And a love triangle to boot. None of this is new, some of it is often boring. So why did I enjoy The Crown’s Game so damn much?

Well, to start, there is no shortage of magic in this book. Don’t get me wrong: I like books that don’t have much magic too. Every once in a while, though, it’s nice to just go all out, like Evelyn Skye does here. The main characters and a handful of minor ones are constantly using magic to do, well, everything, from conjuring food to creating entire islands with vegetation and magical park benches that take you into dream worlds. The magic here can be small or big, but it is always wondrous.

Skye wastes little time getting into the thick of things. After introducing us to Vika and Nikolai, the Crown’s Game proper commences in short order. Vika’s magic is wild and elemental and energetic. She can conjure lightning, command ice, tame rivers. Nikolai’s magic is intricate, mechanistic, methodical. He can create amazing engineering structures, imbue automatons with simulated life. They complement each other so well, yet everyone else is very clear on this “no sharing the magic wellspring of power” rule: one of them is going to have to die.

While it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that Vika and Nikolai are going to be a thing, I respect that Skye develops their attraction slowly. Not even the love triangle thrown in there manages to ruin this for me. Although Pasha is not all that convincing (he is such a dolt), it keeps things interesting, because of course it means that regardless of which enchanter wins the Game, Pasha is going to lose someone he cares about. And Skye has a lot of fun playing with the irony inherent in Pasha’s ignorance of Nikolai’s true identity. When he finally finds out and that wall goes up between them, coupled with his unexpected accession to the throne … oh boy, now that is a sharp and unmistakable transition into the final act.

When Aizhana first comes onto the scene, I questioned her relevance. She seemed like an appendix, never really interacting with the other characters or affecting the main plot—until the end, of course. Even so, I could have done without Nikolai being Pasha’s half-brother. I saw it coming pretty early on—and I’m not usually great at predicting things. It just doesn’t much to the story, beyond justifying Aizhana’s actions and thereby getting Pasha in a position where he has to end the Crown’s Game. Nikolai could just as easily have been the son of some random Russian soldier instead of throwing a bond of blood into the mix. I guess Skye was trying to really underscore the nature of the tragedy here, but I don’t think she needed this extra layer.

The true tragedy in The Crown’s Game lies in its masterful demonstration of how individuals are not always free to make their own choices. We are manipulated, constrained by, rules and systems not of our making. Pasha chafes at the restrictions that surround him as tsarevich and, later, makes decisions as tsar based on what he feels he must do for Russia, rather than for himself. Neither Vika nor Nikolai asked to be part of the Crown’s Game; neither wants to kill the other, not really—nevertheless, they have no choice but to participate in this cruel contest. All of these actions are motivated by the larger necessity of preserving Russia as an imperial force, one with a strong army, strong leader, and strong enchanter. The constant references to uprisings and skirmishes with the Ottomans remind us of the precariousness of Russia’s place as a power.

The climax of this book is intense, partly because you’re holding out hope until the last moment that they will find a way to cheat the game. It seems like Nikolai might have managed to escape death, to at least have escaped into “ante-death” as his mother calls it. Nevertheless, I like that Skye gives us a victor and Pasha a Pyrrhic victory. Whatever hopes he might have had regarding Vika are now shuttered: she can barely stand to be around him, and she requests space until she has to take up her official position of Imperial Enchanter. I’m intrigued by the possibilities that this leaves open for the sequel: it is much more interesting, of course, if the Enchanter doesn’t particularly like her Tsar. Moreover, Yuliana took an instant dislike to Vika at the ball, before she knew Vika was one of the two enchanters. I wonder if that dislike will carry over once Vika is in the employ of the royal family.

The Crown’s Game surprises, because on the whole there is nothing all that new or original about it. Indeed, Skye falls back on tropes that usually don’t do much for me. Somehow, though, the entire book comes together into a very enjoyable experience. The romance is a little forced, but other emotions feel very deep and real (Vika’s subdued state of depression following Sergei’s death, the fact she can’t just continue on as if everything is normal, really moved me). The two main characters approach magic in different ways, as a result of their upbringing and mentoring, yet ultimately they have very similar philosophies. I’m looking at some of the less-than-favourable reviews here and nodding in agreement with many of their points—yet I can’t help it; I liked this book, and I want to know what happens next!