Eat Me

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The exuberant sex scenes in this bestselling work of erotica from Australia demand dog-earing: outrageous and imaginative, they are also graphically convincing. But Jaivin fills the lulls with self-consciously timely dialogue that panders to a hot-button treatment of sexuality and sexual politics. The ensemble cast of four hip women in their 30s tend to talk in sound bites about the beauty myth or the comparative merits in men of brain and brawn. They use words like "empowerment" when trying to decipher the political implications of, say, sticking a cucumber in a man's anus. Chantal is a fashion editor, Julia a freelance photographer, Helen a feminist university lecturer and Philippa a writer of a novel-in-progress called Eat Me. They recount their own sexual adventures and imaginatively entangle themselves in one another's exploits. On their real and fantasy plates they find a 22-year-old musician, a virginal student, a trucker, a Chinese snake charmer, a black gigolo, Rambo, a slave girl and an occasional grape. They are all supposed to be smart, liberated and unrepressed. As for Jaivin, her first novel is much smarter when she throws her characters into bed (or a truck or a supermarket aisle) than when she makes them try to understand the meaning of what they do in any of those venues. This is, really, classic pornography in the 18th-century French manner. It's plain dirty fun that, winking and nodding (and leering), makes a halfhearted show of donning a philosopher's wig. $50,000 ad/promo; foreign rights sold in Germany, Italy, Brazil, Holland, Israel, Spain; author tour. (July)

Library Journal

Bound to be controversial, this debut novel from a young Australian writer features four women friends discussing their sex lives and fantasies in frank detail. In doing so, they raise such issues as the difference between pornography and erotica, the role of gender politics in society, and what constitutes feminism. Along the way, Jaivin also manages to puncture many literary and critical pretensions. Her writing is often funny and satiric, and by layering stories she keeps the reader guessing about what is "real" and what is fantasy. Still, while some readers might enjoy the humor, off-beat characters, and discussions of social trends, others will be shocked and offended by the explicit language and descriptions of what might be perceived as bizarre sexual acts. A possibility for adventurous general readers and some women's studies collections, but purchase with caution. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/97.]Barbara E. Kemp, SUNY at Albany Libs.

Courtney Weaver

"I've never quite understood the difference between erotica and pornography, have you?" muses Helen, one of the four female protagonists in Linda Jaivin's first novel, Eat Me. "I mean, is erotica merely porn with literary pretensions? Or is something pornography if written by a man but erotica if penned by a woman?" This begs a similar question: When does a novel in which sex is the main component cease to be read for "pure" pleasure and begin to exist for its voyeuristic and masturbatory potential?

You can't take any of these questions too seriously with Eat Me, which despite all its literary pretensions and self-referential semiotic theory issues is best read as a racy and entertaining romp. Like the casual sexual encounters that all four of the women describe to every last detail, it tastes great, is less filling and is ultimately meaningless. A bestseller in Australia, this book is a smart and funny exploration of the sexual lives of four 30-ish women living in Australia. All single, all sexually voracious, they spend much of their time regaling each other with sexual conquests, real and imagined, as they move through the trendy cafe and party world of Sydney. Food plays a secondary role in the novel, and is described in just as luscious detail.

Helen, a feminist theory professor, is described as "a whole grain loaf of a woman ... seeded with freckles." Clothes are removed in the mating dance "as if they were the leaves of a steamed artichoke." Figs, strawberries and grapes are fondled, then inserted in nether regions, "sticky seed spill[ing] out, adhering to the lips of her cunt and the secret places on the inside of her thighs." All of which makes for great erotic reading, and much shifting of thighs. But Eat Me's main weakness is that it can't decide what it wants to be, and the reader may feel cheated on both fronts. While one doesn't read porn for its Aristotelian structure or complex characterizations, one does expect something of that in a novel. And while some of the pornographic descriptions in Eat Me are told in wet, hot detail, others of them remain, as one character puts it, "very vanilla."

What is refreshing about the novel is its candid approach. No, most women don't talk to each other the way that Chantal, Julia, Phillipa and Helen do, with their descriptions of getting taken from behind by truckers on deserted roads or raping Rambo-types on the beach or cavorting with cunnilingus-craving security guards. But what if they did? It's an interesting question, and don't think Jaivin doesn't know it. With all the postmodern references to everything from Gothic poets to valorization, from Naomi Wolf to Luscious Jackson, she knows exactly the type of audience who's buying into Eat Me. Ignore all the postmodern, post-feminist, post-fill-in-the-blank and enjoy the snappy repartee and witty cultural references. Then settle in for some well-written erotica. You may even pick up some tips.-- Salon July 17, 1997

Kirkus Reviews

Combine a saucy, Waiting to Exhale sort of girl-gossip tone with Vox's lusty sexuality and you get this witty, sophisticated (if unfortunately titled) tale of four Australian women friends' amatory peccadillos.

Julia, a photographer, adores younger men—even if they do exhibit a frustrating refusal to commit. Helen, a "whole-grain loaf" of a lit professor, can whip up a salacious fantasy about any man despite her feminist politics and anxiety about her weight. Chantal, the anorexic fashion editor of a style magazine, prefers the safety of gay men to the arrogant hetero poseurs she's met in the past. And Philippa, a self-defined lesbian and voyeur, claims she keeps herself sexually satisfied by committing her erotic fantasies to paper. Meeting at Sydney's Café Da Vida, these four high-powered women, all in their early 30s, relish exchanging reports of exceptional one-night stands, libidinous fantasies, shocking past encounters, and erotic schemes for the future. As Chantal recalls her student/mentor S&M relationship with a now-renowned poet and fends off drooling fellow espresso drinkers at the café, Julia tells of seducing a dreadlocked 21-year-old, then flying off to China, where she's ravished in a park by a local contortionist and snake-charmer. Helen captivates her friends with an impossibly lush and funny fantasy of a seaside encounter with Rambo, then stuns them with the re-creation of a tryst with a truck driver. What these three women don't realize as they chat over their cappuccino is that quiet Philippa is taking mental notes, and that their secrets will soon appear in "fictionalized" form in a novel entitled Eat Me. Philippa is soon forgiven, though, as her friends note that she's as generous in print with her own past as with theirs.

Already a bestseller in its native Australia (the author was raised in Connecticut but works as a freelance journalist in Sydney), this tossed salad of erotic scenarios charms as few examples of its genre ever have.