Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire
In fairness, before I trash this book, let me say that my experience with what I guess I will call literary smut is limited. In fact, it is almost non-existent. Still, if I were to try to build a definition of it, I don’t know if Emily Maguire’s Taming the Beast—a tale of an underage sexual deviant and lover of literature who turns into a 20-something sexual deviant and, er, lover of literature—would fit inside. Maybe she didn’t intend it to, although the constant stream of her character’s exploits, first with her English teacher (who also inspires her love of great literature) and then with a whole bunch of friends, enemies and strangers seems to suggest a smutty quality.
The book follows a pattern of bits of Sarah’s life interrupted by increasingly hard sex as she struggles to deal with the affair that awakened her sexually. It has its sexy moments and its wretched moments, and I do not doubt that was the author’s intention, but as a result Sarah becomes quite two-dimensional. I don’t mean that as a cruel and overused trope to indicate that her character is flat. I mean she has two very well developed dimensions: intelligent, witty lit-girl and kinky, submissive slut. Of course, the two play off each other and we see how much of an effect her favourite books have on how she lives her life, but there is not much else to her. The other characters are sketches that revolve around her. Even the dry, older teacher who struggles as much with his love/lust for her as she for him does not jump out enough to make me interested in him either as a tragic lover gone wrong or child-fucker you love to hate. Sarah’s existence outside of these two dimensions seems vague and undefined; there are pieces to put together, but at the end of it all, I was left feeling as if she was nothing but sex and classic books.
I will admit that a few of the sex scenes—especially those that come later in the book when Sarah is all grown up and pushing close to the edge of madness—had sweaty adjectives I appreciated, but there was just too much of the stuff. This should never be a complaint, and I almost feel like a bitch for saying it. Maguire is not at all bad at writing sex, but she overloads herself, stuffing it into every possible page. There are times when I can feel the clichés sneaking up on her like a midnight molester; there is just no need to go directly from biker-rape in abandoned factory straight through to football-team gangbang. I know what she is trying to do and I appreciate it; there are some awesome passages where she gets into the real sickness of the wanton sexual desire that overcomes some of us against all reason and morality. I just think that it could have been done with subtlety instead of blunt-force trauma to her poor character’s sexy parts. Not only would this make the sex sexier and the yuck yuckier, but it would also leave more room to develop background, other characters and the kinds of things that would make it all come together more coherently.
On the upside, “the new bad girl of erotic fiction” (according to Esquire UK) does have a sexy portrait on the back cover. The open mouth and blowjob eyes definitely push it over the edge to at least a two out of five stars (or vibes, or whatever). Does that make me a chauvinist?
