Good in little bites

Charlotte Stein is a must read for me. So I grabbed this when Kindle told me it was available (all hail my amazonian overlords).

Stein’s books are not kissing books, they are fucking books. So there is the usual dance of making sure no one is likely to be reading over my shoulder on my commute train because I like to think my porn is at least mostly private. Her short story collections, of which this is one, are really short tone poems. Like kink scenes, she is exploring situations and feelings without building then into a full story. If you read them all really quick they aren’t as good as if you read one or two, then read something else.

Sometimes it can be off putting because she really plays around with consent issues so be aware. I have been completely put off by some of her shorts! The best way for me to approach all of these is to imagine that all involved parties have worked out the scene beforehand, as we do, and the story is the scene playing out.

This isn’t her best outing. There was nothing that I read that I’m thinking I need to go back to. I like her as an author, but her habit of throwing this kind of thing out there (there are at least four collections of short in her Amazon store) is my least favorite thing about her. Some of the stories really seem like abandoned fragments she re-worked a bit rather than abandoned fragments she picked up and really got ready for the page.

Not her best work, not her worst (that was the vampire one, that one was mediocre)

-fh