October 26, 2020
Greenwell and Kwon deliver on their promise to “take kink seriously” in this enticing, wide-ranging collection that plumbs the depths of desire and control. Several passages capture the delicate nature of dominant/submissive relationships—“I think you have the capacity to hurt me the way I need you to,” says a submissive woman after a marriage proposal in Roxane Gay’s “Reach”; “Dee needed to be in control to give up control,” reflects the narrator of Kim Fu’s “Scissors”—and the euphoria that can come from punishment, as in Greenwell’s “Gospodar,” in which a dominant “master” humiliates the gay male narrator by undermining his masculinity. The strongest entries tend to be the naughtiest. Among them, Alexander Chee’s “Best Friendster Date Ever” captures the “rich shame and defiant pleasure” of a kinky sexual encounter; Kwon’s “Safeword” follows how a married couple rejuvenate their sex life by visiting a dungeon; and Peter Mountford’s “Impact Play” finds a fetish-loving couple attending a Kinkfest before a family visit. But Brandon Taylor’s understated “Oh, Youth,” about an aging, rich married couple and the young man they hire to live with them for the summer, is perhaps the most transgressive. This visionary anthology successfully explores the range of sexual potency in the characters’ power plays.
December 1, 2020
Fifteen tantalizing stories of pleasure, pain, and power. Bondage. Voyeurism. Dominant-submissive relationships. Public displays. All of these kinks and more are explored in the sexy, star-studded fiction anthology edited by Kwon and Greenwell. In the introduction to their probing collection, the editors write: "By taking kink seriously, these stories recognize how the questions raised in intimate, kinky encounters...can help us to interrogate and begin to re-script the larger cultural narratives that surround us." The characters in these stories illuminate the ways gender, politics, and cultural norms inform power dynamics--inside and outside the bedroom. The collection's strength lies not just in the diversity of the writers, but also in the experiences they're exploring. Kink, desire, and sexuality all exist on a spectrum, and so do these stories. In Kwon's "Safeword," a pain-seeking wife and her reluctant husband visit a dominatrix dungeon in Chelsea. Greenwell's "Gospodar," which follows a gay man seeking to be dominated, reveals the tenuous nature of trust--and the potential danger of getting more than you bargained for. A trans couple deals with being watched--in their bedroom and community--in Zeyn Joukhadar's "The Voyeurs." In an already strong anthology, standout stories include Carmen Maria Machado's "The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror," about an orphan who finds a home in a radical theater in early-20th century Paris; Brandon Taylor's "Oh, Youth," which is about the relationship between a rich, older White couple and the young Black man they've hired to live (and play) with them; and Vanessa Clark's "Mirror, Mirror," which is set in a "drag transsexual nightclub" and explores the transformative power in being desired exactly as you are ("Sometimes, their basking in my beauty was enough to thrill us both"). The at-times explicit collection won't be for everyone, but these candid, slinky stories are sure to find their audience. Thrilling, provocative, and unapologetically kinky.
COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
January 1, 2021
In their introduction to this sweeping collection of short stories, most never before published, Greenwell (Cleanness, 2020) and Kwon (The Incendiaries, 2018) write, ""By taking kink seriously, these stories recognize how the questions raised in intimate, kinky encounters--questions of power, agency, identity--can help us to interrogate and begin to re-script the larger cultural narratives that surround us."" In addition to pieces from its coeditors, the book boasts a star-studded lineup: Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, Carmen Maria Machado, Chris Kraus, Brandon Taylor, and more. In Larissa Pham's ""Trust,"" a woman is reluctant to share her most tender desire on a remote weekend getaway. Vanessa Clark brings a nineties Times Square nightclub, and the two people who meet up there, to pulsing life in ""Mirror, Mirror."" Kraus' ""Emotional Technologies"" places a woman's explorations into sadomasochism alongside considerations of romance, philosophy, and experimental theater. Intimate and wide ranging in every sense, the script-flipping, heart-skipping stories gathered here speak to and across one another, conveying truths of desire, experience, and selfhood as only literature can.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.