Customer Reviews

Fresh Girls and Other Stories

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

this was such a great book. I first saw this book at a friends house and proceeded to pick it up. I was drawn in, and couldn't put it down. I had trouble finding it, but I odered it and It took me a few hours to read it from start to finish. I can't tell you how wonderful and exiting it was to read about someone who has a liking for s and m and related material. I found that I really related to this book, especially for someone who deals with depression every day. Lau is a great writer and I plan on buying all of her books. Highly reccommended, but as a warning, it does contain explcit material.

I didn't really find this book all that interesting and appealing, although it wasn't that badly written. Basically the stories deal with prostitution and sexuality, and are influenced by the author's own experiences as a child-prostitute. Her writing was a big thing on the Canadian literature scene a while back, her being relatively young when her first works were published. If you want to sample her writing, I guess this is a good place to start; the book is relatively easy to find secondhand and is pretty short. Should only take an hour or two to read.

I purchased this book when it was featured in one of the catalogues of the several book clubs I am a member of (upon its initial U S release), read a bit of it and put it on my bookshelf. Recently, I ran across her back catalog (which I didn't even know she had)! But the name clicked something in my mind, found the thin work still on the bookshelf (it's about as skinny as she might have been back then!) and reread it from cover to cover with delight. Perhaps (now that I am the age of the men she was encountering as barely a teenager in the mid 1980s), I can better appreciate the buzz about her stuff. Upon this second reading, I realize how erotic her work was. Because each short story is just a few pages long, the book is basically a bunch of "quickies" for someone to reach orgasmic release.

"Fetish Night" brought me back to the night I went to an S/M night at a West Side (NYC) nigth club called "Paddles" in which I was part of a 'slave auction'. Being a former member of the Eulenspiegel Society, I knew about the S/M scene from the outside and inside (as a bottom). Evelyn's story caught all aspects of the scene-- the fantasy inside and the reality outside-- as if she had been there herself. Definitely my favorite; but there's not a limp one in the bunch!

Can't wait to get more of her stuff and wish I could meet her to congratulate her for surviving it all and thriving afterwards!

I first became aware of Evelyn Lau after reading an excerpt of Fresh Girls on a website, and I loved it. I ordered the book immediately. All the stories in it are written with such a real quality to them. She makes things seem intensely beautiful, no matter what. She makes you see the beauty in something with her words and the way she uses them. "Mercy" is by far, my favorite story in this.