Fever: Sensual Stories by Women Writers - Hardcover

Michele Slung

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060170387 ISBN 13: 9780060170387

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1994

Synopsis

A collection of erotica written by women. The stories range from Francine Falk's Lilith, which is about a sensual telephone conversation between two women, to Nanzeen Sheikh's Polishing My Skin, which is on a pre-nuptial ritual practiced in India. By the editor of Slow Hand.

About this title

Reviews

Editor Slung (Slow Hand, 1992, etc.) has compiled another collection of erotica written by women. Most of the authors are not well-known, and all of the pieces are being published for the first time. Each author has added a note about the writing or the meaning of her story. Slung has selected carefully--to give a sense of range and inclusiveness (aesthetic as well as sexual). There's some basic sweaty bump-and-grind action, some lesbian sex, and some ``wow-I-never-knew-it-could-be-like-this'' writing. And, most amusingly and hot in its own way, is Jenny Diski's ``Yarn,'' a feminist fairy tale in which the narrator, a miller's daughter who speaks disparagingly of someone named ``Chaser, or Chooser, or Chancer,'' also turns the tables on Rumpelstiltskin by giving him such a good roll in the spun straw that he forgets his name. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Slung's second anthology of erotica written by women (Slow Hand was the first) embraces diversity-in age and sexual preference-and celebrates desire in many forms. While most tales are concerned with heterosexual love, many passions are explored, from Elizabeth Clarke's lustily defiant "Queer"-a chronicle of a love affair's beginning, narrated by a multiply-pierced, bisexual stripper-to Marion Callen's sly, seemingly demure "An Honest Transaction," about the ladylike but wildly successful seduction mounted by tea-sipping Mavis. In "Lilith," Francine Falk describes the highly charged relationship between two women, conducted almost entirely over the telephone, while the thoroughly Westernized Indian heroine of Nazneen Sheikh's "Polishing My Skin" allows herself to be sensually transformed during a traditional pre-marriage ritual. This pleasing collection reaffirms the joyous notion that love and lust come in a delectable variety of forms. BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The 18 original stories on passion, desire, and lust in this anthology have very little in common with one another except for the basic theme of desire and some of the physical acts depicted. Passion can ignite between two people in so many ways and be expressed in so many ways, and this book presents only a few of the possibilities. Thus, an inmate and his girlfriend eke out the smallest bit of privacy in "Valentine's Day in Jail." For the two women in "Lilith," the anonymity of sex over the telephone is safe and exciting. Mixing lesbian and heterosexual content, ages and cultures, these stories are often funny, tender, and well written, but of course not all of them will appeal to every reader. Slung edited a previous collection of erotic stories by women entitled Slow Hand (Harper Collins, 1992). Public libraries with medium to large fiction collections will want to add this title.
Lisa Nussbaum, Euclid P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060170387
• ISBN 13: 9780060170387
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220