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"Miranda's Magic" by johnna@unixg.ubc.ca (romance).
Gandmar: 10, 7, 10
"Miranda's Magic" by johnna@unixg.ubc.ca . Guest Review by Mary Jorsay Gandmar (maryjg@finebody.com). If this JDR repost has been reviewed earlier, I've missed both story and review - and I can only hope it wasn't panned, for this one is a beauty. I can't recall when last I so enjoyed, and was so moved, by an erotic short story. Actually, it's hardly a story, in the sense that it has no plot whatever. It only describes the author and her lover/husband having consensual sex.. But to use a word like "only" (or any equivalent) in describing this piece of writing is to do it manifest injustice. It is passionate writing, deeply felt, extremely sensitive. The author savoured every second of the sex, not just because of the physical pleasure it afforded her, but, more subtly and more importantly, because of the person with whom she was having sex. There is a full-blown relationship here, founded on something more lasting than naked lust. It is, indeed, what someone once called 'true lust' - the passion that springs not only from physical awareness and desire, but from a complex of other, more substantial factors, - emotional, psychological and ethical. While it happens, the sex is extremely erotic - it is powerfully realized, graphic, superbly detailed, extremely arousing. But this is not just an 'I had great sex' narrative - the incident has been drawn from the depths of memory, where it has long lain in a vein of gold. In its resurrection, and the re-telling born of that resurrection, there is almost as much passion as there was during the incident itself. But now there is something else, a tempering if you like, a tinge of pathos for that which was, and which, inevitably, must remain in the past. If anything, the memory is even more precious than the moment itself. And it is this aspect, and the concluding line where, after so much energetic and driving sex, there is the gentle aftermath, and a new beginning, that made the story very special for me. Alas, it's not the kind of story that can sustain a sequel, or further developments - but that is both its tragedy and its success. Athena (Technical Quality) : 10 Venus (Plot & Character) : 7 Mary (Appeal to reviewer) : 10 |