Emmanuelle - the novel

 

Swinging Thailand

Emmanuelle
By Emmanuelle Arsan
Translated by Lowell Bair
Harper Perrenial
ISBN 9780007300402

Trigger warning: Taboo and illegal practices discussed and suitably condemned. 

Marryat Rollett-Andruane was a Thai-French woman who, in 1956, married a French diplomat called Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane. They settled in Thailand and their hedonistic lifestyle apparently gave birth to the swinger scene in that country. She was also an actress (and allegedly director), which I’ll probably get into in a later review but, under another name, she stars with Steve McQueen in the movie The Sand Pebbles (and quite possibly had him as one of the notches on her belt.. or below it at least). In 1959 she allegedly wrote and, certainly had published (originally anonymously), a novel apparently based on her real life sexual encounters called Emmanuelle. My understanding is that the book was banned and the publisher did some jail time for it (not sure where I read that as I can’t find that info now but I’m pretty sure that’s what I read and now I’ve read the actual novel I can better understand why that might have happened… yeah, I’ll get to that later).

In the late 60s the book was unbanned and published under her pen name Emmanuelle Arsan but, it’s alleged that her husband actually wrote the book. Personally I think this might have been a collaborative work because of the way the book is paced and, there’s also some evidence recently to suggest that may be the truth of the matter… yeah, I’ll ge to that pacing issue soon enough. 

Now I wanted to read this before I embarked on Severin’s small set of the white Emmanuelle films but, I really didn’t know what I was letting myself in for here. It wasn’t the explicit erotic elements that gave me pause for thought here… I’m all for that. Nope, it was another big element of the book which seemingly permeates the majority of the attitudes of the characters which both surprised me and made me wonder why this book is a) still published and b) hailed as an erotic masterpiece. Yeah, I’ll get to that element soon because I’m torn right now about wanting to call the book out for what it also is and... the idea that doing that might in some way endanger the publication of this blog. I’ll need to word this carefully at first… I think.

Okay, so the first impression I had as I started the tale, which tells of the French diplomat’s wife going to stay with him in Thailand and embarking on a polymorphous sexual journey (ha, I’m already being diplomatic with my wording) was that it’s full of sex. More than I’d expected… at first. Including the opening sex on a plane which I believe starts off the movie version and which I know starts off the movie Black Emanuelle (with one M to evade copyright problems… reviews will eventually be coming of that strand of films, is the plan). 

Now, some reviewers have called the book badly written but I disagree. I think it’s very well written and has a nice, almost poetic turn of phrase about it. For instance, rather than say such and such character laughed at her question, the book phrases it thusly… “This question let her discover Bee’s laugh!” And things like a woman’s sexual regions might be referred to as, say, her Astrakhan triangle. And the quality of the written sex is also pretty well done for erotica. I recently read a much lauded piece of erotic source for another review coming soon at some point here and the text was absolutely terribly written (cough… Behind The Green Door… cough) and this book is like Dickens compared to that stuff. A blow job, as given in the first half of the book, is rendered beautifully with words, for example. So I was actually fairly impressed by the writing. Although, since it’s translated from the French, one has to wonder if the skill of the writing lies in the original written word or the translator… something I’m sure I’ll never know.

Okay… then the book takes a turn for the worse. The sex disappears and a character called Mario enters the story. And then we get maybe 60 or more pages of unbelievably boring and terrible philosophy on the nature of eroticism. To say it’s dull would be an understatement. It’s stops the book stone cold and leaves it to die. It’s why I believe that maybe it was a husband and wife collaboration… with one writing the first half and one writing the other half.  It’s also at this point that you kind of realise how easily malleable and changeable the lead character’s mental outlook is. She seems somewhat fickle to the point of instability as each new sexual encounter… most of them open ended and not resolved in this particular text... takes place.

Now then, I’m calling this book out now because… well... I was surprised that a lot of the sexual encounters and discussions in the book take place within the company of minors. Underage sex is happening here and, though the victims of this are not portrayed as such, usually dominating and instigating some of the sexual content, it’s quite unsettling and makes me question the legality of the book (and makes me wonder just how far the film must deviate from the source to be allowed a cinema release… I guess I’ll find out soon). But, yeah, while it’s not all the book it certainly is an underlying part of the tale and it does not shy away from scenes of sexuality involving, well, youngsters. I’m astonished this book has been hailed as a classic and I’m just not sure what’s going on here… nor why the majority of the short snippet reviews on Amazon I quickly scanned to see if other people were calling it out, rarely mention this insidious aspect of the book, if at all. 

And that’s me done with the first Emmanuelle book, I think. While the book is quite engaging for the most part and offers surrealistic imagery such as an orchard of wooden penises hanging from the trees… the other stuff I mentioned in the last paragraph is a real deal breaker and I’d find it hard to recommend this thing to anybody. Now I have to see what’s happening in the movie version, I guess. I’m sure that element must have been stripped out of the tale, such as it is (more a series of episodic encounters than a tale, truth be told). 

Every Shade Of Black

Shade Runner

Every Shade Of Black
by Linzi Drew-Honey
Matador ISBN: 9781789013863

Every Shade Of Black is the third novel, that I know of, by former British glamour model and actress Linzi Drew (aka Linzi Drew-Honey). Among many other things she has done in her lifetime, she has published one autobiography, many years ago (and which really needs a sequel) called Try Everything Once Except Incest And Morris Dancing (which I reviewed here) and her fictional work Every Shade Of Blue (reviewed by me here), to which this is the sequel. Now this lady probably needs no introduction to UK people of a certain age but, if she does, I would urge you to read my previous reviews of her work first, to help fill you in a little on her famous background.

I bought her previous novel direct from her in a nice personalised copy at the Camden Film fair and, biding my time through the current pandemic, was able to remake my brief acquaintance with the lady at the recent Conway Hall Film Fair so, I'm glad I waited as I now have a signed copy of the sequel.

Every Shade Of Black continues the story of Suzanne (who I believe in my heart is, at the very least, partially based on the author herself), her new lover Sebastian, her soon to be ex-husband Edward, the treacherous young thing Tatiana (who stole Eddie away from Suzanne before the opening of the previous novel) and, just on the perimeter of their story and hovering like a slightly sleazier version of a Bond villain, appearing when required to make the drama of the book work at times, is Angelo, who kidnapped Suzanne in the previous book and who is concerned that one of his upper class sex addict, sex workers - namely Tatiana - is not back safely in the fold.

The story is a proper continuation of the various characters set up in the previous book and the majority of its fifty eight chapters, asides from an epilogue taking place in September of the same year, takes place between the 2nd and 17th of January, with each chapter once again including the specific date of the events ‘going down’ in that chapter and the name of one of the four characters. Each chapter is then told from the point of view of that specific character as Linzi takes us on a slow but deliberately paced journey to... well, okay, I’ll get there.

The story is fairly simple but, once again, this means the writer can take her time but also... much to the readers advantage... pepper it with liberal amounts of graphic, erotic content. However, it’s not just the copious amounts of sex which make this one an entertaining read but the general way the characters are explored. Sebastian especially is sketched out quite thoroughly and his personal story arc in this is the one which is mostly concentrated on. The majority of the novel takes place in the week of his birthday, when he and Suzanne take a trip to a five star hotel in Vancouver, with the now ‘fully employed again’ Suzanne doubling it up as a trip for her new job as a kind of hotel reviewer... and with Sebastian taking the opportunity to use it as a reason to finally catch up with the estranged father from his troubled childhood.

Once again, the characters are drawn as much by the small minutia of their lives in terms of the purchases they make, the clothes they wear, the perfumes they use and the wines they drink etc... as it is with everything else but, like the first novel which employs the same style of honing in on details to paint a broader picture, this works fairly effectively and at no point comes across as lazy writing (as it sometimes does with other authors who try to negotiate this kind of content).

As usual, every now and again (well, okay often) Linzi comes up with a very nice turn of phrase and one of them from early on in the novel in particular struck me, as she describes minor villainess (or perhaps expensive, nymphomaniac hedonist might be a better term rather than villainess) Tatiana as being... “Smug and contented like a pampered moggy...” Yeah, this made me smile because I knew exactly what she meant. She also, midst all the sexual shenanigans, comes up with a lovely description of snowfall, which heavily comments on the romanticism of the ice cold flakes (I know at least one lady who doesn’t share my love of snow but that’s because she lives in Switzerland, where it seems more of a bother when you’re living with it for long periods, I guess). But for UK based me, the sentence “The snow started to accelerate; a million wet kisses descending from the heavens as the sky darkened.” seemed pretty spot on to me.  I also now know what the word ‘sybaritic’ means so, yeah, glad my phone has a dictionary.

I mentioned the story was fairly simple but it’s also fairly effective in that there is a little twist which surprised me. I knew there had to be something the book was working towards in terms of the dramatic impetus of Sebastian’s character but I couldn’t for the life of me work out how. Then I discovered, the simple trick of using both the long form and shortened version of a name of a periphery character was the basis for a quite effective and somewhat serendipitous reveal of a plot point and, yeah, I really didn’t see that one coming at all... sometimes a simplistic structure is the best way to hide a secret and it certainly worked in this one. Hidden in plain sight, as it were.

There’s lots of nice little pop culture moments in the book too. I thought the reference to the Milk Tray Man might possibly date the novel against the purported age of the central characters but, after doing a quick Google on that, I found that those “All because the lady loved Milk Tray” style adverts were being made again. There’s also a nice, sneaky reference to the John Landis movie An American Werewolf In London, which of course featured Linzi as Brenda Bristols in the porn movie within the film, See You Next Wednesday.

My only real complaint... and this is probably not a criticism as such, is that the amount of sex the central four characters get up to each and every day is phenomenal. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting fairly long in the tooth now but the characters here put my stamina levels to shame... if I pushed things to these kinds of heights a certain body part would probably drop off me pretty quickly, I suspect.

All that aside though, Every Shade Of Black is another winner from the glamourous Linzi Drew-Honey who, like her central protagonist, has hair which is “a swath of golden sunshine” and, thankfully for this cynical, old reader... writing talents to match the binding. I definitely hope this isn’t the last thing she writes for sure and look forward to hearing more news about her as a writer in years to come.

Every Shade Of Blue

Drew Colours

Every Shade Of Blue
by Linzi Drew-Honey
Matador ISBN: 978-1784625306

I’ve talked about Linzi Drew (aka Linzi Drew-Honey) before on this blog. As well as being a very famous British ‘glamour model’ she also had small roles in various films ad TV shows including work with directors like John Landis (she appears in An American Werewolf In London) and Ken Russell (she appears in a few, if memory serves). I reviewed her long out of print but incredibly illuminating autobiography, Try Everything Once Except Incest And Morris Dancing, here but I had no idea that it would be my honour to meet this thrilling lady in person, earlier in the year when she did a signing at the Camden Film Fair. It was here that I picked up a personalised copy of the first of two (to date) erotic romances which she has written and it is furthermore my pleasure to have very recently read said tome, Every Shade Of Blue. This is surely a title attempting to cash in on the ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ market (with a further layer of reference in the title, perhaps, by recalling Linzi’s time as a sexy host of the Electric Blue videos of days long gone). There’s not many, I am sure, more qualified to write about this stuff than Linzi, that’s for sure.

Now, I’m not all that practiced at reviewing (or indeed reading) erotica, having just a few other erotic novels on this blog and this one, well, it took me by surprise. I already knew Linzi could write (see my review of her autobiography) but this novel definitely revels in the pulpy nature of a certain, steamy style of erotic literature and, frankly, this was almost a refreshing change from some of the stuff I’ve read in the past.

The novel is basically about a triangle of the three main ‘players’ of the book... the adventurous divorcee Suzanne which, honestly, I couldn’t help but equate, to a certain extent, with the writer herself and her two ‘rivals’ for love and carnal delights, the ‘good guy’ doctor Sebastian Black and the ‘bad guy’ Angelo.

The writer wastes no time in giving character descriptions which give a sense of just who these people... and their co-stars... are and she does this in the way someone like Douglas Coupland or Bret Easton Ellis might do it, by giving lots of descriptions of the details and minutia of the characters lives with products and brands etc being emphasised as a kind of shorthand into the kinds of people they are. So clothes, food, watches etc and the variations of these kinds of items are all highlighted, helping build up a picture of the people who populate the novel. This is very much a literary form of ‘clothes maketh the man’, so to speak and she does this with a good turn of phrase and a certain sincerity which might, in some other writers’ works, seem a little hollow.

The book is very quickfire and easy to read, with each chapter told from the viewpoint of a certain character and with each of these chapter sections titled up, documentary style, with the character’s name and the date in which the action takes place... which gets more important as the story progresses and the timing for the characters gets more crucial to the impetus of the main plot. This also allows the author to cut to the chase a little more rapidly using section signifiers like scene shifts and present scenes with vast swathes of trivia edited out... just like you’d get with a location transition in a movie... which I thought was a useful approach.

The book is full of sex, of course, especially in the first and last quarter of the tale... with some nice and somewhat light hearted phrases to sum up the state of her character’s respective headspaces. So, for instance, in a ‘stealth airplane sex’ sequence near the start of the novel, we get stuff like...

“She was shocked as she felt her nipples harden. Take-offs always thrilled her, but this was so much more.”

Some thrillers have a high body count as bad guys are violently dispatched to increase the excitement and enhance the credibility of the central hero in the milieu in which he finds himself. Similarly, Linzi’s book has a high orgasm count... in fact, the lead heroine had already had a couple before I was even up to page 9. And throughout a lot of the book she finds herself, in the writer’s own words... “awash with orgasm.” Which I thought was a nice turn of phrase but it’s not just the sexual shenanigans that make for some evocative writing. I thought, for instance, that “Ruby studs adorned her ears and she had painted her lips a slash of sticky blood red” was particularly nicely done at invoking a certain eye for colour co-ordinating in the main protagonist while being similarly evocative of a penchant for the almost subliminal invocation of body fluids throughout the course of the story.

As it is, I felt I actually believed in some of the characters somewhat and not just the lead protagonist, who wears clothes made of material that “second-skinned her feminine curves”. I soon found myself suitably in suspense somewhat as the book leads to a climax which isn’t quite written as I’d expected... which is no bad thing, of course. I was a little taken aback that the main villain of the piece was someone who practices a heavy BDSM lifestyle because, frankly, this is as valid a form of sexual expression as any other and so equating it with ‘the bad guy’ wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to read but, there are plenty of recipients who seem to be enjoying certain aspects of this lifestyle in the novel too so I’m not going to make any judgements on this. I don’t think this was necessarily a conscious decision on the part of the writer. Or, if it was, then I’m sure the matter was well considered, hence the enjoyment of said practice with some of the other characters.

That being said, while I believed in the characters, I did come away on several occasions disappointed that both the main male protagonist and antagonist had ridiculously huge amounts more stamina than I do. I couldn’t be performing like they do under similar superhuman circumstances, I’m sure (and not for want of trying, I suspect). However, I did find the book quite credible most of the time and, more importantly, extremely entertaining... if distracting to my daily routine on more than one occasion.

In conclusion, then, if you’re into erotica and want to read a sex soaked tale written by someone who, given her past life experiences, is more than qualified to know what she is talking about, then definitely give Every Shade Of Blue a go. For my part, I find myself looking forward to the next novel in the series, Every Shade Of Black but I am waiting before I purchase said tome to see if Linzi will be doing anymore Camden Film Fairs in the near future as I’d surely like to get the second volume personalised too... not to mention meet the lady again after first seeing her on my TV all those years ago. Fingers crossed I get that opportunity sometime soon then.