|
Return To the Celestial Review (This does NOT open a new window) Return To the Index (This does NOT open a new window) Note, to make reading multi-part stories easier, story links (links with dejanews.com or www.qz.to, NOT the review or profile links) will open up a new browser window. When you are done reading the story, or section of the story simply CLOSE the story window. |
|
"Fusebox" by Mary Jorsay Gandmar (subcontinental sex)
9
"Fusebox" by Mary Jorsay Gandmar. Guest review by Dave Myers. MJG is the real deal. I used to find MJG to be one of the most inscrutable and literary of the a.s.s.m regulars. From her writing it is clear that she is a rather non-traditional (!) Indian woman. After a visit to her web site article. As with the women in her stories, and to hear her tell it on her website, MJG just plain loves to fuck. Give her a big, strapping, animalistic man of any caste, any time, anywhere, and she's a happy camper. Honestly, I don't care about her personal life. So why am I writing this? The most sensational feature of MJG is that she is such a good writer that is doesn't matter whether or not she has lived every moment of the lives of her characters. The woman depicted in "Fusebox" is a lawyer moonlighting as a worker in the strip shows on the seedy side of Indian life, screws her chauffeur, her mechanic (who fixes her "Fusebox"), and a judge. What makes the stories click is the flicker of reality and the sense that MJG knows what the environment is like where her characters work (and play!). Only a handful of other writers of a.s.s.m are so lucid. Now, erotica is one of the few genres where the adage "write what you know most about" is probably not very good advice, so the realness of a story is no litmus test for whether or not grand poetic license has been invoked. Maybe MJG is a first-hand expert on sex with lots of partners, and maybe not. It doesn't matter; for when I say she is "the real deal" or the "genuine article", I mean as a WRITER. Her craft is good enough to convince us that her first person narrative in "Fusebox" (and many of her other stories) is from the heart. In a.s.s.m, it's rare that you come away from a story feeling as if you were delivered a brief glimpse into the head of a woman who "just plain loves to fuck." I have only two minor gripes with this story. Near the beginning of "Fusebox", MJG nearly pulls off a major coup of erotic fiction by introducing her narrator as a lawyer who works for a firm that also dabbles in the sex industry. Plunging the reader head first into the world of porn-making, strip shows, and prostitution, MJG almost manages to paint the picture of a hedonistic bad-girl without loss of credibility. Had there been a little more literary preparation, I would be able to get rid of the "nearly" and the "almost" from the sentences above. Also, while it makes sense for her mechanic/lover to express initial disbelief over her exploits, the amount of chatter concerning other characters' awe over her trysts is unnecessary. Neither of these complaints weakens this text very much. While this is not one of MJG's more ambitious projects, it's a great story. [NOTE: From her web site, it appears this author has a number of stories that have never been posted on Usenet and are unavailable as hypertext. MJG continues to deliver a unique voice to this group, and I certainly hope she receives enough encouragement to make some of her older works publicly available.] Rating for "Fusebox": 9 |