4 July 2013
This sensual jewel of a tale is an extract from ‘Valley of Amazement’ – the first book in six years from the beloved and bestselling Amy Tan.
Shanghai, 1912: beautiful courtesans compete for the patronage of wealthy gentlemen. The contest is deadly serious; if played well, it can set a young woman up for life as mistress to a rich and prominent man.
However, erotic power is hard to achieve, especially in the loftiest social circles.
Enter veteran temptress, Magic Gourd. Once one of the most beautiful women in Shanghai, now the attendant of Violet, an aspiring but inexperienced courtesan. Violet has youth, but Magic Gourd has the cunning without which Violet is sure to fail. These tricks of the trade are not in books; to pass them on, Magic Gourd must recall her own professional past, bringing her lessons alive with stories from a career spent charming and manipulating men.
Amy Tan’s ‘Rules for Virgins’ is a painstaking recreation of this strict yet sexualised society. Shocking and intriguing, it reveals the vanity and folly, calculation and desire, that define the mysterious human heart.
31 July 2013
An Italian castle, Summer, 1970. Sex is very much on everyone's mind. The girls are acting like boys and the boys are going on acting like boys. Keith Nearing - a bookish twenty year old, in that much disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven - is struggling to twist feminism towards his own ends. Torn between three women, his scheming doesn't come off quite as he expects.
And now in the twenty first century, as he reflects on that summer holiday, the aftershocks of the sexual revolution finally catch up with Keith Nearing.
The Pregnant Widow is gloriously risqué and ferociously funny. It is Martin Amis at his fearless best.
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