Spearmint Leaves [Paperback]

Ben Pleasants (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2010

They were identical cousins. One was a TV star. One was a porn star. Each was fascinated by the other's profession. One day they switched places. They exchanged their roles and their lives. Nobody suspected a thing. And nobody foresaw the tragedy that would ensue.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ben Pleasants is a noted playwright. His plays include The Gluttons (1970), Winter in Mongolia (1975), The Hemingway/Dos Passos Wars (1998), Contentious Minds: The Mary McCarthy/Lillian Hellman Affair (2002), and the upcoming The Ghosts of Pumpkin Park (2011). His next novel is The Victory of Defeat.

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (July 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1453695451
• ISBN-13: 978-1453695456
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,422,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LAUGH ON EVERY PAGE!, August 1, 2010

By 

JON - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spearmint Leaves (Paperback)

This book would make a great Coen Bros.'s film. No sympathy laughs, no pseudointellectual humor, it's the real thing-- gut-busting guffaws. A cynical send-up of the television, porno, and tabloid industries by a guy who's worked for decades in the arts in LA.

Two cousins who look like identical twins are separated at age 8 and reunited at 24. By that time, one of them's become a soap opera star, the other a porno queen. They pull a switcheroo--impersonate each other without telling anyone for a week-- with hi-la-ri-ous consequences. A classic plot, but written so that it can take off in any direction at any moment. Clips right along and with a laugh or two on every page.

There's tons of raunchy (especially lesbian) sex. Reading it as porn is not my bag, but if you're into that, it's another reason to buy the book. It will offend many, but I find nothing really shocks these days. In any case, it's mixed in with lots of really funny sex gags. Merciless, respects no idols (including Ofra), cutting narrative and dialogue.

Weaknesses: Like some other of the author's works, the first page or two is a bit stiff. Pleasants is a playwright, so I compare these openings to the first minutes of a drama. The actors speak in stage voice and it sounds kind of forced and artificial. But your brain adjusts to it quickly and you become engrossed in the production. Same with his prose. After a couple pages you slip into the groove of the story. In this book, Pleasants also breaks the Creative Writing 101 rule "show, don't tell". But a master is allowed to do that for good reason, which here is to keep the book short and keep the show moving. It's really about the story and portraying the lifestyle and exposing the world of people whose careers revolve around public image. In the middle is a scene that could have been thrown out about an old guy kept prisoner where the text kind of degenerates into B-level science-fiction. But it's only 1-2 pp after which the book gets back in gear.

The characters are delightful. Though often perverse, they have utterly no sexual hang-ups. They are pushing the envelope to go after their passions with gusto. if you know someone who's severely depressed, give him or her this book to learn to enjoy life again. It's also fun reading all the LA street names which are completely right-on, just how you'd drive to get around.

3.0 out of 5 stars 18th century sexual romp in our times, August 10, 2011

By 

John Prince (Ukiah, California United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Spearmint Leaves (Kindle Edition)

Spearmint Leaves reads like a modern Anais Nin writing a version of a comedy of errors. Two very close cousins separate in their early years only to discover themselves as young adults, one of them a glamorous model and budding TV personality and the other a porn star. The author employs a sexually explicit casual writing style that is both titillating and comedic at the same time. The cousins rediscover themselves via a pornographic video and their startling resemblance leads one to find the other and discover that they are in fact half sisters and not just cousins. Using a bit of a Twelfth Night scenario, they decide to change places and there begins an early theater romp of playing out each other's identities.

The writer's use of sexual explicit language is both engaging and disconcerting. As the story unfolds each of the half sisters play each other's lives in an often startling and intimate series of vignettes, various characters along the way coming close to identifying them but never quite. The book's title comes past midway with the introduction of a sixtyish wealthy woman who demands the most robust Lesbian relationship including the almost gagging fetish use of spearmint leaves to complete her sexual arousal.

The story is tightly written. There is considerable tongue in cheek humor along the way, "caught him with a Colt 45, duct tape, an electric vibrator, and a copy of Catcher in the Rye" and "you know how long it takes to get Yale out of your system...worse than food poisoning" to name a few. And I couldn't help but think the author was remembering the same black and white Dragnet dialogue of my youth as one of the sisters says "I call it work. You get used to it. It's a job".

At times the sexually explicit language overpowers the plot. Ah but now and then the author will turn it on its ear as when one admirer says "he still has a Tampax you gave him when you were 19". At those moments, titillation turns to comedy and you are aware of that the author is laughing right along with you.

Whether the author has succeeded in a what Henry Miller would have plotted as a short story I cannot say for sure. But there is no doubt that the reader will remember and visualize this comedy of sexual manners in Hollywood, and wonder whether the world as depicted through a porno movie isn't in fact the real world, and glamour the fraud.

4.0 out of 5 stars Hot sauce for your mind?, June 23, 2011

By 

Jane (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spearmint Leaves (Paperback)

Kind of like the hot sauce in a Thai restaurant -- a bit hard to take at times, but you keep coming back for more! This book has a lot -- intrigue, humour, tragedy, characterization, and plenty of sex -- group sex, lesbian sex, voyeur sex, oral sex, Tantrix sex. It's a fast read, but not a one-nighter. Well-researched and intelligent. What makes identical-looking people take different paths?