Two novels, two young women at the frontiers of sex. Like a series of Penthouse letters penned by Kathy Acker, Lie With Me recounts a woman's sexual escapades, picking up random men in bars for a series of increasingly extreme encounters, hoping to understand love from the far side of sluttiness. In The Way of the Whore, Mira, an introverted Jewish girl obsessed with Jean Genet, allows herself to be seduced by the sex industry, determined to find meaning in her tormented relationships...
It's just another boring summer for our teenaged narrator — until Barbra arrives. An Ethiopian Jew, Barbra was brought to Israel at age five, a part of Operation Solomon, and now our narrator's well-intentioned father has brought her, as a teen, to their home for the summer. But Barbra isn't the docile and grateful orphan they expect, and soon our narrator, terrified of her and drawn to her in equal measure, finds himself immersed in compulsive psychosexual games with...
Berger's first two novels garnered a fair bit of controversy in their explicit depictions of sex (and in the case of Lie with Me , the design's resemblance to a children's book). Maidenhead will be no exception, particularly as this piece of literary smut concerns a sixteen-year-old.Our promotional ephemera for this book will be Maidenhead-brand condoms.Berger has said this novel will mark the end of her investigation into pornography and innocent girls, and is the final act in...
