Overview
Elaine, ambitious and hardworking, plays by the rules at the office so well that she's on the brink of an impressive promotion. But in the cyberspace world she visits every night as "Francesca," her daytime self disappears. On-line, her cool mastery gives way to abject obedience as the mysterious "Inez" seduces her into demeaning—and irresistible—sexual adventures. When a careless mistake destroys the barrier between virtual reality and her corporate life, Elaine perceives a disturbing connection between her nightly degradation and her professional success. As she becomes obsessed with finding her real-life paramour, her speculations about Inez's true identity quickly run wild, and soon all of her once-innocent encounters with friends and colleagues are charged with sexual overtones.
In a darkly comic, highly erotic tale for our time, Martha Baer captures the allure of anonymous cybersex and the elusiveness of gender identity in a world where the real and the virtually real become almost indistinguishable.
In a darkly comic, highly erotic tale for our time, Martha Baer captures the allure of anonymous cyber-sex and the elusiveness of gender definitions and social identity. As Francesca will appeal to all those who have ever been seduced by the power of words--and by their own imaginations. 288 pp. National ads. 7-city author tour. Online promo. 35,000 print.
Synopsis
Elaine, ambitious and hardworking, plays by the rules at the office so well that she's on the brink of an impressive promotion. But in the cyberspace world she visits every night as "Francesca," her daytime self disappears. On-line, her cool mastery gives way to abject obedience as the mysterious "Inez" seduces her into demeaning—and irresistible—sexual adventures. When a careless mistake destroys the barrier between virtual reality and her corporate life, Elaine perceives a disturbing connection between her nightly degradation and her professional success. As she becomes obsessed with finding her real-life paramour, her speculations about Inez's true identity quickly run wild, and soon all of her once-innocent encounters with friends and colleagues are charged with sexual overtones.
In a darkly comic, highly erotic tale for our time, Martha Baer captures the allure of anonymous cybersex and the elusiveness of gender identity in a world where the real and the virtually real become almost indistinguishable.
Mary Elizabeth Williams
With so many harbingers of snooze-inducing trendiness in Martha Baer's new erotic mystery, it's remarkable that as much true blue good stuff manages to peep out as it does.
Given a premise like this, it's hard not to lapse into eye-rolling from the get-go. As Francesca is the debut novel from a Wired magazine editor -- the book was also serialized in HotWired -- about Elaine, a woman who's involved in a torrid (please, say it's not) online (oh God, it is) affair with a cruel mistress who plunges her into the seamy world of S&M cybersex. By day, Elaine is an assertive, confident young office worker on her way to a promotion. At night, she logs on to her computer "as Francesca" and assumes the identity of horny slave. Her phantom lover, "Inez," may not be what she appears, either -- maybe she isn't really a woman at all. (Hey, is this that gender swapping all the kids are talking about?) Maybe she's even someone our heroine knows from her professional life. The book's groaningly Freudian thesis? That Elaine learns to get on top in her real life through being submissive in sexual fantasy.
This subject matter makes As Francesca feel immediately faddish and dated. (If it had been written 20 years ago, it would have been about disco.) And yet for all its almost painful obviousness (you figure out who "Inez" really is very early on), "As Francesca" is a meticulously stripped-down snapshot of a certain time and place, and it's also an elaborate study in loneliness and confusion. "How could you let a genius like that, whose orders and caresses gave you not just pleasure, not just your standard corporeal rush, but on top of all that gave you power -- how could you let someone like that simply drop out of your future?" Elaine asks, and suddenly you realize she's not some nerd who needs a modem and dirty talk to get off; she's a woman who's so painfully unsure of who she is that she needs a stranger to tell her.
As Francesca manages to treat all of its stray characters -- gay people and straight people, S&M practitioners and corporate climbers -- with a quirky, matter-of-fact respect. Baer may not be saying much that's new, but she does say it with great sincerity. As a tale of "empowerment," this novel is about as satisfying as a Lifetime original production, but as a story of longing for a love, longing for a life, it does just fine. Baer taps into emotions that are the same whether they're typed on a screen or whispered in an ear. -- Salon
Editorials
Mary Elizabeth Williams
With so many harbingers of snooze-inducing trendiness in Martha Baer's new erotic mystery, it's remarkable that as much true blue good stuff manages to peep out as it does.
Given a premise like this, it's hard not to lapse into eye-rolling from the get-go. As Francesca is the debut novel from a Wired magazine editor -- the book was also serialized in HotWired -- about Elaine, a woman who's involved in a torrid (please, say it's not) online (oh God, it is) affair with a cruel mistress who plunges her into the seamy world of S&M cybersex. By day, Elaine is an assertive, confident young office worker on her way to a promotion. At night, she logs on to her computer "as Francesca" and assumes the identity of horny slave. Her phantom lover, "Inez," may not be what she appears, either -- maybe she isn't really a woman at all. (Hey, is this that gender swapping all the kids are talking about?) Maybe she's even someone our heroine knows from her professional life. The book's groaningly Freudian thesis? That Elaine learns to get on top in her real life through being submissive in sexual fantasy.
This subject matter makes As Francesca feel immediately faddish and dated. (If it had been written 20 years ago, it would have been about disco.) And yet for all its almost painful obviousness (you figure out who "Inez" really is very early on), "As Francesca" is a meticulously stripped-down snapshot of a certain time and place, and it's also an elaborate study in loneliness and confusion. "How could you let a genius like that, whose orders and caresses gave you not just pleasure, not just your standard corporeal rush, but on top of all that gave you power -- how could you let someone like that simply drop out of your future?" Elaine asks, and suddenly you realize she's not some nerd who needs a modem and dirty talk to get off; she's a woman who's so painfully unsure of who she is that she needs a stranger to tell her.
As Francesca manages to treat all of its stray characters -- gay people and straight people, S&M practitioners and corporate climbers -- with a quirky, matter-of-fact respect. Baer may not be saying much that's new, but she does say it with great sincerity. As a tale of "empowerment," this novel is about as satisfying as a Lifetime original production, but as a story of longing for a love, longing for a life, it does just fine. Baer taps into emotions that are the same whether they're typed on a screen or whispered in an ear. -- Salon
Publishers Weekly -
A whodunit with an edge, this debut novel, first serialized in the online magazine HotWired, is a mildly spicy one-night read. By day, narrator Elaine Botsch has it all together as she works hard to scale the corporate ladder. By night, using the handle "Francesca," she cedes all control to "Inez," her online dominatrix. These two sides of Elaine's nature coexist tidily: the more roughed up and degraded she is during her online trysts, the better she performs at the office. She's just about to clinch a promotion when a bonehead move (she forgets to use her alias when logging on) breaks down the barrier between her fantasy life and her professional one. Seizing on Elaine's gaffe, Inez hints that she knows Elaine off-screen, and the process of trying to detect Inez's real identity sends Elaine into a personal and professional tailspin. Unfortunately, the alienation of Internet sex (even zany S&M) and keyboard communication does infiltrate the book. Few of the characters become three-dimensional or interact convincingly. As Elaine sorts through the possibilities of who her dominatrix is, it's as if she's flipping through a Rolodex of stereotypes: the geeky librarian who might be a closet whipmaster; the control-freak boss who might secretly let loose. Only Elaine lifts off the page, and even her Dr. Jeckyl and Ms. Hyde dichotomy is reiterated rather than developed dramatically. But Baer's writing is taut, and her entertaining story comments intelligently-and with a light touch-on the nature of degradation. (Feb.) FYI: Baer is executive editor of HotWired and was formerly features editor at Wired magazine.Library Journal
Masochistic cybersex is the subject of Baer's sophomoric first novel. Ambitious Elaine Botsch struggles up the corporate ladder at work and relieves her stress late at night by logging into a sex chat room as "Francesca," where she begins an affair with "Inez." Inez's desire for sexual mastery soon involves Elaine in brutal sex games that she is powerless to stop. When Elaine carelessly logs on under her real name, it becomes apparent that Inez is someone who works with Elaine. In her obsessive desire to ferret out the identity of her cyber-lover, Elaine must reconcile her private and public lives by discovering which of her colleagues also has an alternative life. Where Vox (LJ 11/15/91), Nicholson Baker's novel about anonymous phone sex, had its moments of cleverness, and Sullivan and Bornstein's Nearly Roadkill (High Risk, 1996) dealt with serious issues of gender identity, censorship, and control of the Internet along with lots of sex, Baer's soft-core pornography has nothing else going for it. Eminently skippable.Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, SeattleKirkus Reviews
Baer's six-month serial for Wired's on-line magazine, Hotwired (where this first-time novelist is executive editor), loses some pizazz in its translation to print as heroine Elaine V. Botsch, corporate cog by day, on-line sex slave by night, travels compulsively back and forth between her mutually enriching worlds.For years, Elaine Botsch has remained a contented small player in the budgeting department of Poplar & Skeen, but the attractive young employee's recent involvement in an on-line sex conference has not only spiced up her evenings but spurred her on to ambitious new heights in her career as well. In ways that Elaine can only guess, her humiliating electronic trysts as "Francesca" with a dominatrix who calls herself "Inez" have led to such excellent performance at her workplace that she's even up for a promotion into the executive ranks. Weeks fly by brilliantly as Elaine kneels down before her mistress by night and spouts eye-catching suggestions for corporate improvement by day—that is, until the night she accidentally logs on with her real name rather than her anonymous on-line "handle." It soon becomes clear from Inez's subsequent references to Francesca's promotion and workplace that she knows her lover in their daytime lives. Elaine's confidence begins to crumble as she seeks to discover who at the office knows what sort of woman she really is. Then Inez disappears among the phone lines, absconding with her mysterious magic.
This darkly humorous tale of erotic isolation would certainly scan well on the glowing screen of an office PC. In the clear light of print, however, a mediocre style and increasingly flimsy plot distract from the clever premise, leaving a reader unfulfilled and underamused.