Title: The Dirty Bits for Girls
Author: India Knight (editor)
ISBN: 978-1844082285
Publisher: Virago UK (March 1, 2009)

The Dirty Bits for Girls has been around for a while – it was first published in 2006 – but I’m offering it up because 1) it’s a great read and 2) because it gives you enlightening glimpses into books that you might not have considered picking up otherwise.

This collection of ‘dirty’ excerpts runs the gamut – Georgette Heyer, Anaïs Nin, John Cleland, Jilly Cooper, to name just a few of the authors whose work appears in it – and, as such, caters to pretty much every taste. From the over-the-top soap opera sex of 80s Judith Krantz (Scruples) to the dark eroticism of Pauline Reage’s Story of O, Dirty Bits serves up a tasting menu of sex in literature and is perfect as means of steering you towards the books that do it for you and away from the ones that don’t.

The extract from Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck with its smouldering, rakish hero, the Earl of Worth (a.k.a. Julian St John Audley), is toe-curlingly good. At the risk of sounding like a giddy thirteen-year-old, the guy is hot. He’s handsome. He’s arrogant. He’s dominating.  He’s insolent. There’s not a single ‘traditional’ sex scene in the excerpt (or in the entire book for that matter) – the raciest it gets is a raised hem and a kiss in the back of a curricle-and-four – but the sexual frisson between him and Judith, the heroine, is brilliant. Reading this particular snippet sent me into something of a Heyer frenzy and I consumed a number of her Regency ton romances in short order after reading the Dirty Bits taster. A perfect and satisfying example of Alpha male versus feisty, spirited heroine, with sexual chemistry to boot.

John Cleland’s Fanny Hill was a welcome surprise. I’d not read Mr Cleland before picking up Dirty Bits and found his writing incredibly, incredibly sexy. His ability to describe prostitution in a way that is at once explicit and flowery is very impressive. No raw words, just some incredibly pretty euphemisms that somehow work without seeming silly: ‘downy spring-moss’, ‘luscious mouth of nature’, ‘pink slash in the glossiest white satin’. You absolutely know what he’s talking about (a bunch of men having sex with prostitutes in front of one another) but the detailed descriptions of the sexual act are artfully softened by his pretty turns of phrase.

For those of you who like it darker, the Story of O by Pauline Reage hasn’t lost any of its impact (no pun intended) since it was first published in the 1950s. This BDSM classic makes The Fifty Shades of Grey look like Enid Blyton and will either have you running for the hills or squirming deliciously in your seat. Blindfolds, cuffs, collars, whips, and multiple partners. Be warned. It’s dark.

Jilly Cooper’s Octavia and Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus also make welcome appearances in this anthology. (I’m going to talk about the incredibly sexy writing of Anaïs in another post but suffice to say her erotic short stories still feel contemporary and beautiful years after they were first written for a private collector for the bargain price of a dollar a page.)

I have to confess, I’m not a fan of everything in here. Time hasn’t changed my opinion, for example, of Judy Blume’s Forever, which has not improved, for me at least, since I read it at the tender age of ten (although I am pretty certain I’m in the minority). I remember forcing myself to slog through it because it was banned from the school library – half the parents had signed a petition to keep it from our young impressionable eyes – and being completely underwhelmed. It’s not that the writing is bad (it isn’t) but the whole penis-naming thing still strikes me as odd and contrived and I just can’t get past it. If you’re going to pick a name for your manly bits, for God’s sake, choose something decent. ‘Ralph’ sounds like a man from the IT department.

The Dirty Bits for Girls is available from: Amazon.co.uk (paperback), Amazon.com (paperback), Barnes & Noble (paperback).

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