Customer Reviews

Nymph

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Part of the fun of being a reviewer is seeing something unusual appear in my mail box. I review for a handful of academic journals and my beat is academic criticism, which I review a lot of almost whether I want, or not. Well, Nymph (a handsomely packaged little hardcover collection), by Francesca Lia Block, & Jaeda DeWalt (Illustrator) is a collection of nine tales of erotic fantasy, Mer: Spirit: Milk: Milagro: Nymph: Goddess: Plum: Fox: Change. All, the tales are loosely linked together evoke and then blend classical, literary Motifs, with contemporary, settings, lifestyles, and preferences.

Sadly a major reviewer thought it was his job to thumbnail he contents telegraph (his understanding ) intent of each story. was He used turgid and descriptive language, almost as if you were reviewing an industrial strength porn film. I think he missed the intended market for this work. I will not do that.

It is a challenge to say which story I liked the most because in a sense all of then work together a part of a greater whole. I read the entire book in one sitting and have decided to go with those impressions. Mer was a wonderful story which evoked some long latent imagery from Eliot's The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock in my mind, it then took us past it to a liberating and mysterious ending, something that has been for over 80 years since Eliot wrote it. Milk was a different story about love and death, and, and Fox, resonate well with some the Images of Well's The Island of Dr Moreau;. Another thing I liked about by Francesca Lia Block, was the way she wrote about and to an extent towards, and about, but not exclusively for, women.

This is a book of subtleties and sensations directed more towards our Senses and sensibilities than our base desire to read about good hot sex in graphic and descriptive language. Francesca Lia Block sharpens our senses with anticipation rather then numbing them with receptive and un mediated images. She understands well the potential of Fantasy Genre to support this type of the erotic short story in the New Millennium

It is interesting that and evolving Fantasy Genre has the potential to function as the last refuge for the erotic short story. Circlet Press www.circlet.com has an informative website which foregrounds many very interesting projects, which are directed to a wide range of preferences. I would encourage the reader to check it out. Hardcover, 126 pages

Phillip Kaveny, Reviewer

Whereas I'd never call this book quality literature, it is definately entertaining. I read it in under an hour, and it kept my heart beating. It tells several love stories (all heterosexual, except one lesbian story), which are unrelated, but each have one similar character from another to keep them linked... which is a very clever tactic. It's very sexy and magical, and great for a saturday night home alone or a snowed-in sunday afternoon. I definately reccomend this book as a light, frivolous read. Enjoy!! (By the way, the hardcover edition is pocket-sized and purple - very cute.)

I first read one of the stories in this little book, Mer, in another anthology. I loved it. I review erotica/porn professionally and it was the best story I'd read in ages.

Something about her prose always touches me deeply, but her erotica - well, it brings tears to my eyes.

I don't think it's vulgar, I agree with previous reviewers that the negatives are written by teenagers who were unsuspecting as to the nature of the book since she writes more often for a younger audience. For those who have lived and loved for awhile, check this one out, it is truly lovely.

This book is as most of Francesca's books are- a vivid, imaginative fantasy with colorful characters that are more than easy to relate to. Except this book has alot more spice than any of her previous "young adult" novels. The sex is explicit, but at the same time beautiful and real, unlike some trashy romance novel. It interweaves stories of a large group of characters, all connected in some way, and tells how sex can sometimes save a person's soul and create a bonding power unlike anything else. Simply poetic and beautiful. I heavily recommend it to all.

Francesca Lia lock has been one of my favorite authors for years now: I count The Hanged Man, Dangerous Angels, and Girl Goddess #9 among my favorite book, but this is book fails to capture the magic that lurks inside her others. Block is not an erotica writer, and it shows: the sex scenes are out of place, redundant, too fluffy, and really not that erotic at all. Many of the characters are whiny and unlikeable, although I did find the character of Plum to be interesting. The stories are too short to really pull you into them, and when she tries to intertwine them, it comes across forced and sketchy. While Francesca Lia Block's work is without a doubt wonderfully unique and beautiful, this particular book isn't. Even her biggest fans would do fine in skipping it.

Francesca Lia Block, known for her writing in the young adult genre, has created Nymph, a lush collection of erotic short stories for adults. Using the same fairytale ideals as her previous novels and borrowing from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Block uses transformation, myth and magic to intertwine each tale. Block's prose evokes images bathed in purple and green, full and sensual. The actual sex portrayed in the work is effective enough, but the true sensuality exists in the way she tells the stories.

Each tale relies on the belief that sex, desire and love have the power to alter a person's life. In some cases this transformation is a positive, life affirming experience. In Mer we encounter a mysterious mermaid with the power of the ocean behind her to invigorate a fading surfer. Milagro introduces us to Plum, who discovers that she is bestowed with the gift of helping lovers find their true loves. This revelation comes through an intimate encounter with her best friend Santiago, who realizes he likes boys afterwards. Plum returns again in Nymph. This time she sleeps with her friend Sylvie in order to free Sylvie from the string of punk rock losers she keeps bringing home.

However, not all is rosy when it comes to desire. As we all know the power of sex has an evil side. Goddess brings us to a strip club in which the women literally are transformed into grotesque goddesses with wings and feline features for the pleasure of one man. We are told the spell may be broken through love, but soon learn love is not a panacea. Death also lingers in the background of some of the tales, fully rearing its head in Milk and again emerging in Plum.

I picked up Block's first adult book out of curiosity to see how she'd handle the form. I enjoy her lyricism and her quirkiness in her YA fiction. I found this to be of a piece with her larger library. In fact, if you spiced up her YA novels with some more explicit vocabulary, you could probably neatly drop a few segments of them in here without anyone being the wiser. Block is not inexperienced in writing about sex. The only difference here is the quantity and the language.

These stories are interesting little character sketches--and creating interesting little characters is what Block does best. They're not particularly erotic, in my opinion, primarily because the main characters are--in typical Block form--pretty darned sad. Explicit sex aside, they're really more about romance, about loneliness and the need to connect, than they are about sensuality and sex. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Block does her schtick very well, and while it's more challenging for her to work her magic in the short short format she's set herself here, she manages to pull it off very cleverly, in part through the interlocking story schematic, which does allow her to squeeze a little extra character development into these tiny spaces. Some of the stories are better than others as some of the characters are better than others, but the collection as a whole makes a good entry in the Block library. The adult Block library. Personally, though, I hope this is the last of this kind of thing Block feels the need to write. Emotionally, there's nothing here that you can't get in her YA fiction, and her alienated characters I think have something so important to share with many of her young readers that it would be a shame to deprive them of it for the sake of a little explicit language and more graphically detailed sex.

I have always been excited by the works of Francesca Lia bLock. Anyone who has read one of her previous works knows how poetic and sensual they are. Thus, it is only natural that she would write a collection of erotic stories. As much as I enjoyed the book, I must say it was a disapointment in comparasion to many of her earlier works. Unlike many of her previous short stories, these are slightly underdeveloped. They are exciting and fanciful, but you never really feel for the characters. Unless you've your heart set on buying it, I'd recommend previewing a story or two.

This book is beautiful. I read it on the way to a wedding and was amazed by the poetry and the eroticism. It is a clever book with several interwining tales that do feature sex, but as several reviewers before me have mentioned, these tales focus on the healing power of sex. I think anyone (possibly even a teenager, though I would hope not yet) can understand certain situations in this book. No one other than Francesca could have written this book.

This is a fresh, uplifting, delightful book, a great addition to the genre of women's erotica, which is often stilted and formulaic. This book applies FLB's very original poetic musical voice to creat fresh, entertaining and lyrical adult stories, that all very cleverly intertwine.