Becky's Book Review #6 - The 52 Seductions by Betty Herbert

Book: The 52 Seductions
Author: Betty Herbert
Genre: Relationships/Sex
Star Rating: 4/5

General Description:
You might remember, back in February, I interviewed a blogger called Betty Herbert. I'd found Betty Herbert after someone posted a link to her blog on the forum I belong to. Betty was blogging about sex in a long term relationship and the affect that being together for a long time can have on your sex life.

She'd been with Herbert, her other half for about 14 years - and married for awhile too - and is in her early 30's. As an experiment, they'd decided to seduce each other, once a week for a year - hence The 52 Seductions. I was absolutely captivated by her blog - her refreshing honesty, candour and humour as well as how much she and Herbert loved each other.

I wasn't surprised either to find out that her blog had come to the attention of a literary agency and was being turned into a book - hence this review. It's important to state that the book is not just a bind up of 52 odd blog posts, it's a coherent literary narrative describing one year in the sex life of a married couple. It's endearing, funny, rude, entertaining and just quite simply, wonderful.

This Much I Know Is True - An interview with Betty

I am very, very excited about tonight's guest on my sofa. We've had a real mix of lovely people so far, but I am delighted to introduce to you blogger and published author (and dare I say it, sexpert) Betty Herbert of The 52 Seductions blog!

The blog - and soon to be published book - details Betty's attempts to to re-seduce her husband after 10 years of marriage, which some people (me included) found alternately funny, endearing, eye-opening and, above all else, inspirational - particularly for her confrontation of many of the issues that can plague a long term relationship! As before, I am honoured to have her sitting on my virtual sofa and to be interviewing her!

Betty would like me to tell you that she is 33, and lives on the Kent coast (Southern UK for non Brits) with her husband Herbert and her cats, Bob and Elvis. She likes knitting, cooking, drinking cocktails and swimming in the sea (but not in the winter. She is not one of those hardy types). 

So, we are munching thin crispy pizza with anchovies and olives mmmm and she's slurping away at the red wine, I'm on the white! Betty asked me to pick the music so we're listening to a random combination of 80's cheese (Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, Laura Brannigan) and some bits of the Tron soundtrack with a dash of Arcade Fire! Get comfy and we'll get on with the show...

Let's Talk About Sex Baby....Word of The Week

Well yeah, as the song goes really, let's talk about sex. Let's just get right down to the nitty gritty. How does one write the perfect sex scene? Neither too smutty/pornographic nor too fluffy and schmaltzy. What words do you use to describe parts of the anatomy? Do you make it funny? What if everyone who reads the scene assumes you've written it based on your sex life + the person you're sleeping with? What if what if what if................

In case you're new to the blog and am wondering WTF is this crazy person going on about, every week I do Word of the Week (WoTW). I pick a word and talk about it in relation to writing. The last few weeks' words have been quite intense - and provoked a lot of discussion - so I thought I'd do something a little more light-hearted this week and talk about sex.

This whole post was inspired by one of my status updates during Nanowrimo, when I was struggling with writing the sex scenes in my book. Seeing as one of my main characters is a sex slave, I couldn't really avoid writing about it, but god it was hard . My status update read:

"lots of people have asked to read my nano book but I'm very sorry I can't show it to any of you. It has sex in it and then you'll know far too much about what I think about sex and it's just all too wahhhhhhhhhh I bet Jilly Cooper doesn't have this problem she just gets on with it. Help! "

This status provoked 21 comments as to what makes a good sex scene and whether people can still look you in the eye after you've described anal sex (not that I have, just a for example).


So - is there an art to writing a good literary sex scene? And what do I even mean by good - everyone has different ideas of what makes a good sex scene right?! And clearly none of this applies if you're writing erotica/bonkbusters/posh porn etc.


My best example of this is the library sex scene in atonement. It's simple but obvious and leaves your imagination to fill in the blanks (blanks that were hugely helped by the divine James McAvoy playing Robbie in the film). I think Ian McEwan should also win an award for excellent, if not the definitive use, of the word cunt.


Therefore, for the purposes of this post, I shall define a good literary sex scene as one in which you know exactly what is happening without it being described in TMI detail. Equally it should still be titillating - I want my readers' pulses to speed up a little, I want their pupils to be a touch dilated  - but I don't want them frantically dashing home for a quick one! It is the fine art of brushing the canvas without painting in the detail. 


It is also quite hard to write a sex scene that doesn't end up being comically amusing - mainly due to issues with what words to use for the various parts of the anatomy. If I list some examples here:


Male: penis, cock, willy, member, rod, erect, erection, hard on, stiffy, tumescent, spunk, come, cum, semen, sperm
Female: Clunge, gash, cunt, vagina, vadge, clit, flaps, pussy, quim, minge, lady garden, hairy mound, mons venus


I could go on - I did considerable research on twitter for this, which resulted in much tea being snorted out of my nose onto my laptop and general hilarity at our inability to find attractive names with which to label our body parts. I must also pay brief homage to Judy Blume here who surely must win an award for best name for penis ever - the hysterically named 'Ralph' in the book Forever - followed by the immortal line "I have an uncle Ralph". Loving how this does not in any way, diminish teenage ardour.


There was also much revulsion at any of the common metaphors used in books including things like "his eager fingers caressed her wetness" - for a start, how can fingers be eager? They're just fingers - are they possessed? Let's not even go near the wetness side of things. This is what I mean by TMI - we know what you're doing, either use the proper words (it's a clit, folks, every lady has one) or just don't bother at all. As for descriptions of orgasm - where everyone comes together naturellement, all the talk of waves crashing and reaching peaks and riding it out sometimes makes me wonder if the characters are fucking or on some sort of outward bound course.


Which brings me onto the verb one uses for sex scenes. Do they fuck? Do they make love ? Do they shag? Do they 'do it'? Do they screw? Is he giving her one? Shafting her? The list is endless. I know that there are different types of sex - fucking is different to having sex IMO - but really, lets call a spade a spade people. They're having sex. End of.


My final issue with writing about sex is actually fear of how it reveals what your own attitude to sex is. My book involves several different types of sexual relations - infidelity shags, loving sex and paid for fucks. All of which have to be described differently + provoke different reactions in the reader. It doesn't mean that this is the type of sex I have myself, but when you've had the same partner for many years does that mean your readers think you're drawing on experience. Ultimately my characters define the sex they have - not me - I'm just their conduit and I certainly haven't experienced (sadly?) some of the situations I describe.


I guess the main conclusion I can draw about writing a sex scene is that - much like the act itself, and like writing - everyone does it differently. You have to write a sex scene that stays true to your book, its voice and its characters and screw everyone else (bad choice of words, slaps self). Surely, much like sexual partners - for every sex scene, there is the perfect reader? You just have to work out which buttons to press.


Thanks for listening - and for the very entertaining contributions to this from the tweeties! As ever, please let me know your thoughts. Am hoping to be back tomorrow night with a photo essay and then interview day on friday. Sunday is going to be my Top 10 Poems!


Thank you and goodnight


Stupidgirl has left the building

Bed Surfing When You're Sick

So, brain is still full of fog + dust bunnies as well as my sinuses appearing to be full of quick set cement. I have the world's heaviest face.

I was too tired to even tweet this morning. I had a 3 hour nap which was full of disturbing dreams (note to self, do not take paracetamol on an empty stomach). Since then I have been reading random blogs on the interweb. Here are some that I liked:

Slating SATC2 - warning, this is brutal. It's therefore excellent. Don't get me wrong, I liked the SATC tv show but the movies SUCKED ASS. Big fat ass. Sorry ladies.
Slating Liz Jones'  er, as the link says really.
Daily Mash article spoofing said Liz Jones' article (other good Daily Mash stuff about sex here and on Sarah Palin here)

#savelibraries in top 5 worldwide trends on Twitter was picked up by the Grauniad
Toryboy is sick Lucy Mangan's hilarious article about her sick husband. Man-flu shman flu. "Get Better! Hurry Up!" (i do see the irony in posting this seeing as I am, myself, sick - but i do not require triangular sandwiches, I am merely an *angry* sick person)

Gah, that's enough ranty blogging. Hope you liked the amusing list from yesterday. If you missed it, it's here

Finally, when I was lying in bed with the duvet OVER my head, before dozing off, the following poem came into my head. At the time I thought it was a work of unmitigated genius. Now I see it is the clearly the ramblings of a person made slightly mental by a cold and (yet again) taking paracetamol on an empty stomach. Enjoy the nonsense:

Nonsense Pretentious Poem I Wrote When Sick

"Sometimes - the voices in my head

Go silent - when this happens

It is like a blanket of snow across

my unconscious. I'm not sure

if this is a gag or a

fresh start"

Thank you + good night

Stupidgirl has left the building