Naughty but nice
THE DIRTY BITS... FOR GIRLS<br>edited by India Knight<br>Virago pp272, ISBN: 1844081699
In my early teens, I vividly remember sneaking into my mum's room to borrow something I knew was strictly out of moral bounds. And no, it wasn't her clothes or her make-up. Rather, it was a book called Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon. I knew there were bits of it that were not, strictly speaking, for my eyes but I was curious to see why they weren't.
I started reading the book and couldn't put it down. The mix of business, lust, greed and revenge was heady, fascinating stuff which gripped my imagination. And one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was because it was forbidden.
Anyway, on to The Dirty Bits... for Girls, edited by India Knight. This is a collection of excerpts from books which were part of The Sunday Times UK columnist's teenage years and which basically introduced her to sex in novels. In her wonderfully witty introduction, she informs the reader that while living in an all-girls boarding school, she and her fellow students were given their first taste of books with "dirty bits" in them when one of the girls sneaked in Anais Nin's Delta of Venus.
India and her friends were shocked, intrigued and a bit disgusted. Did people actually do such things, they wondered. Of course, as she says, the book's protagonists were French and everyone knows what the French are like. Yet as they perused more books of this, well, genre, they realised that it was all quite natural and normal.
The Dirty Bits... for Girls includes extracts from a selection of diverse books. Sadly for me, there's nothing from Sidney Sheldon, who died earlier this year and whom I believed to be a woman for years after I had finished Master of the Game and devoured If Tomorrow Comes and The Other Side of Midnight, this time, with my mother's blessing.
The book contains passages from books of varying degrees of naughtiness. For instance, the bits from Georgette Heyer's Regency Buck - which features what one would call a rake trying to seduce an innocent girl - and Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber - which is more about love than lust - are small fry when compared to the pieces from Scruples by Judith Krantz, Nin's Delta of Venus, Octavia by Jilly Copper or even John Updike's Couples. In these books we find, a woman who sleeps with a pilot on the way back from her husband's funeral; what really goes on in the modelling world; life in the fast lane and how it can go wrong; and wife-swapping, husband-swapping and the sexual escapades of a pregnant woman.
Knight also includes excerpts from classical literature, from Shakespeare's ultimate lovers Anthony and Cleopatra and Keats' poem The Eve of St Agnes to Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's prologue and James Joyce's Ulysses.
One bit I did enjoy reading was from DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover. This is one book I have never read but have often wanted to so I might actually get down to it now. I also laughed out loud at the piece from Rosaline Eskine's The Passion Flower Hotel, which is about a bunch of teenage girls at a boarding school deciding to sell their charms to the pupils of a nearby boys' school.
This book is for those ladies who feel like an afternoon of wicked indulgence. Pour yourself a large glass of wine, open a box of chocolates, snuggle up to the sofa, kick off your shoes and enjoy it.
• Ms Borg graduated with a BA (Hons) in Communications from the University of Malta. She works as a drama teacher with Stagecoach Malta and moonlights as an actress.
• A review copy of this title was supplied by Agenda Bookshop.
I started reading the book and couldn't put it down. The mix of business, lust, greed and revenge was heady, fascinating stuff which gripped my imagination. And one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was because it was forbidden.
Anyway, on to The Dirty Bits... for Girls, edited by India Knight. This is a collection of excerpts from books which were part of The Sunday Times UK columnist's teenage years and which basically introduced her to sex in novels. In her wonderfully witty introduction, she informs the reader that while living in an all-girls boarding school, she and her fellow students were given their first taste of books with "dirty bits" in them when one of the girls sneaked in Anais Nin's Delta of Venus.
India and her friends were shocked, intrigued and a bit disgusted. Did people actually do such things, they wondered. Of course, as she says, the book's protagonists were French and everyone knows what the French are like. Yet as they perused more books of this, well, genre, they realised that it was all quite natural and normal.
The Dirty Bits... for Girls includes extracts from a selection of diverse books. Sadly for me, there's nothing from Sidney Sheldon, who died earlier this year and whom I believed to be a woman for years after I had finished Master of the Game and devoured If Tomorrow Comes and The Other Side of Midnight, this time, with my mother's blessing.
The book contains passages from books of varying degrees of naughtiness. For instance, the bits from Georgette Heyer's Regency Buck - which features what one would call a rake trying to seduce an innocent girl - and Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber - which is more about love than lust - are small fry when compared to the pieces from Scruples by Judith Krantz, Nin's Delta of Venus, Octavia by Jilly Copper or even John Updike's Couples. In these books we find, a woman who sleeps with a pilot on the way back from her husband's funeral; what really goes on in the modelling world; life in the fast lane and how it can go wrong; and wife-swapping, husband-swapping and the sexual escapades of a pregnant woman.
Knight also includes excerpts from classical literature, from Shakespeare's ultimate lovers Anthony and Cleopatra and Keats' poem The Eve of St Agnes to Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's prologue and James Joyce's Ulysses.
One bit I did enjoy reading was from DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover. This is one book I have never read but have often wanted to so I might actually get down to it now. I also laughed out loud at the piece from Rosaline Eskine's The Passion Flower Hotel, which is about a bunch of teenage girls at a boarding school deciding to sell their charms to the pupils of a nearby boys' school.
This book is for those ladies who feel like an afternoon of wicked indulgence. Pour yourself a large glass of wine, open a box of chocolates, snuggle up to the sofa, kick off your shoes and enjoy it.
• Ms Borg graduated with a BA (Hons) in Communications from the University of Malta. She works as a drama teacher with Stagecoach Malta and moonlights as an actress.
• A review copy of this title was supplied by Agenda Bookshop.