Celeste Arden

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, which I read in the 1987 Star edition under a slightly fey cover which gave little inclination of its delights. It is the tale of an English roué who has drunk deep at the sensual well of sensuous women, and who now seeks to repay womankind by delving into (and satisfying) her fantasies and powerful erotic stimuli. He discovers a perfect residential establishment in France in which beautiful women wish to avail themselves of men, like him, who are willing to undertake the necessary roles in their fantasies, and he enrols there, accepting all that it offers. As well as providing stimulating descriptions of his activities with ten of these women, the book tries hard to assess the similarities between men and women in the way in which they imagine and arrange their erotic satisfaction. In doing this the author provides much food for thought, in a way that lifts the book high above the accepted norms for the genre. The encounters described range broadly across many of the fantasies common to men and women, including erotic flagellation.… (mere)