5 recs: Erotic Literary Novella
In the cut
by Susanna Moore
Don’t watch the movie, omg, just don’t. Instead, read this brilliantly crafted erotic thriller about a female English professor who has an affair with a homicide detective who is investigating a pattern of grisly murders popping up around town. I read this book almost 20 years ago, and it is still holds up as one of my favorites to recommend. It is a gritty, sexy, sophisticated page-turner. After you read it, then you can go watch the movie, if anything to ogle Mark Ruffalo’s glorious pornstache.
Animals Eat Each Other
by Elle Nash
I wouldn’t call this an “erotic” literary novella, but definitely one that explores desire at its most cutting. The protagonist—a promiscuous, pill-poppin’, self-servin’ RadioShack employee—finds herself charmed by a married couple who are Satanists. Over a series of encounters, the three fall into an amicable love triangle. This book is a slow burn, but a seductive one that plants the reader snug inside the main character’s sullen yet covetous shoes. If there is anything I took away from this book, it was a newborn fascination with polyamory and Satanism.
INside Madeleine
by Paula bomer
This short story collection is so horny. The last story, the title novella, follows an obese preteen who grows up to be a high school slut absolutely obsessed with her vagina and its impressive capacity. It is literary smut, and I say that with profound envy. Alissa Nutting said it best: “Bomer’s prose doesn’t flinch, doesn’t filter—the bravery of these stories left me breathless.” I don’t know what was in the water in the early-to-mid 2010s, but I’ve been selecting all my latest reads according to that particular time in publishing, and lemme tell ya: the literary ladies of the early 2010s were FEARLESS. 3 out of 5 books on this list were published around that time.
Women
by Chloe Caldwell
The premise is simple: An unnamed woman falls into a sexual relationship with another woman for the first time, opening her up to new awakenings regarding her own queerness. Caldwell orchestrates a marvelous symphony of humor, urgency, obsession, eroticism, and grief. Also, not to sound shallow, but the packaging is so sweet and understated—it’s a tiny book. No blurbs. No graphics. Even the epigraph is bitingly tasteful: “Girls are cruelest to themselves.” Anne Carson. I mean, could you ask for a better epigraph to a novel entitled Women?
wetlands
by Charlotte Roche
This book is not for everyone. In fact, it’s really only for people who can appreciate the relationship between humor and shock value, like someone telling a joke so offensive you can’t help but laugh to escape the discomfort. When we meet Helen, she’s lying ass-up in a hospital due to an anal lesion she got while shaving her gouch, and she’s not even a bit embarrassed. She is the most shameless female protagonist I have ever read, which is arguably the key to her charms. She is a young, sexually precocious woman who is divinely comfortable in her own filth. Yes, this novella is explicit and shocking, but it’s also kind of brilliant and, surprisingly, liberating.
