Turning on the Girls [Hardcover]

Cheryl Benard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2001

Ten years ago women took over, and now they are busily changing everything, from schools and language to women's and men's thinking. Lisa, the twenty-two-year-old heroine of Turning on the Girls, works at one of the ministries dedicated to mental revolution. Her task: to update women's sexual fantasies. There will be no more masochistic or romantic daydreams! Lisa finds herself slogging through piles of highly unrevolutionary literature, from The Story of O to Harlequin romances. This is what used to turn people on?

Meanwhile, not all men are pleased with this kinder, gentler world. Harmony, an underground men's movement, is planning a violent uprising to put women back in their place. Lisa and her trusty assistant, Justin, are recruited by security forces to infiltrate Harmony. Before long they find themselves in Zone Six-where the unreformable men reside-on the run, trying to save the world as they know it.

Cheryl Benard's deftly comic novel gives us a chance to envision a world designed by women-and to reflect on how such a world would differ from our own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Women have taken over the world in this gender-centric, rollicking good novel. Called on the carpet for bad behavior and general ineptness, the worst specimens of the male sex are banished to Zone Six by an elite group of New Age Femi-Nazis; borderline males are "re-educated" with counseling and medication. But a creeping romantic urge survives in the triumphant female population. Women still long for male companionship, and black market sales of romantic novels are corroding the very foundations upon which the Revolution was fought. Enter Lisa, an operative of the lauded Ministry of Thought, who is charged with finding an acceptable sexual fantasy for women. Researching centuries of erotica, pornography and outright s&m, Lisa concludes that women have always dreamed and written about dominant, testosterone-laden men. Just as she's about to give up in despair, she is given a new assignment. With Justin, her administrative assistant and a current re-education subject, she is ordered to infiltrate Harmony, a counterrevolutionary underground men's movement. Despite discovering that Harmony meetings are rife with such archaic pursuits as makeovers for women and coed dancing, Lisa and Justin have little to report until they are invited to a special meeting and find themselves stranded in Zone Six with simpering women, redneck men and positive proof of an antirevolutionary coup attempt but no way to transmit their knowledge. Though hampered by a long-drawn-out beginning, the novel is saved by wry humor, backstabbing betrayals and fabulous secondary characters. Deeper than a mere "what-if" fantasy, this contra-Atwoodesque social fiction may satirize political correctness, but it also manages to salute present and future feminist triumphs, albeit in roundabout fashion. (Mar.)Forecast: The title is terrific; the cover that carries it is not: flowery, it gives little clue as to the nature of the novel. But this book will succeed primarily through word of mouth, of which there will be plenty.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

If Dorothy Parker had written Brave New World it might have resembled Benard's satiric vision of a utopia designed and run by women. With the Revolution, the problems of hunger, disease, and poverty are overcome, and crime has become a thing of the past. Lisa, Benard's heroine, works at the Ministry of Thought helping create a body of sexual fantasies appropriate for the new post-Revolution woman. Her assistant, Justin, is in the final stages of his "re-education" and is hoping to be able to rejoin society as a full-fledged citizen. However, a counterrevolution is brewing: a group of disenfranchised men (and the women who love them) have formed an underground movement to restore the old order. Justin accidentally becomes involved, even though he appreciates what the Revolution has brought. Lisa is ordered to infiltrate the group, and as things heat up, Benard explores with wit and insight the war between the sexes and all the confusion that has resulted from the evolution of gender roles over the last few decades. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; 1st edition (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281785
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281786
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,165,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars absolutely fabulous, May 14, 2001

By 

Meg Fullerton (Montclair, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turning on the Girls (Hardcover)

This is not just one of the most inventive and hilarious books I've read this year, it's one of the funniest ever. Benard has you laughing on just about every page. She takes the idea of a world in which women are charge and uses it to skewer --well, just about everybody and every idea even remotely p.c. It's the kind of book you want to call your friends to quote lines from. (And even my husband was laughing out loud when I read him parts.)

Benard has just got such a great, rollicking voice, and no target is taboo. Combine that sense of humor with an appealing main character, Lisa, who is charged with the difficult task of finding new ... fantasties for women in the new world order, and her charmingly clueless sidekick, Justin (who's being reeducated in a series of nine month long courses), and you've got a very fun book that also makes you reconsider your own preconceptions -- which is what the very best fiction does: reveals the world to you in a completely fresh way. So be warned: if you don't like to have your view of the world challenged, if you can't stand the idea of sacred cows being taken down, and you can't laugh at the foibles of men and women alike, this book isn't for you. But for the rest of us, we couldn't ask for a better, more clever guide to the absurdities of gender warfare.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This was one wild ride, March 5, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turning on the Girls (Hardcover)

Women rule the world. Borderline males who can be fixed are reeducated with counseling and medication. Die hard chauvinist pigs and similar non-repairable disorders are exiled to Zone Six.

A growing black market thrives with the selling of contraband consisting of the most dangerous element to society, romance novels. In the Ministry of Thought, Lisa searches for a permissible sexual fantasy so women will not regress back to the outlawed romantic urges of previous generations. To accomplish her mission, Lisa conducts research into the banned pornography of the past. With the help of her reeducated assistant Justin, they go underground, but soon find themselves in trouble in Zone Six from throwbacks of both genders.

1984, with a totally female dominated society, is the underlying foundation to this strong satirical futuristic tale. The story line hammers at everyone across the spectrum for excessiveness in personal agendas even as the plot acknowledges the recent gains by women in western society. Readers will enjoy TURNING ON THE GIRLS because the novel is humorous yet biting with no sacred icons allowed to escape the grip of the plot's teeth. Although the establishing of the setting requires patience, once the ride reaches the acme of the first incline, it is a swift no stop wild trip into social irony.

Harriet Klausner

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOT a "feminist" novel but a good light-hearted beach book, August 12, 2002

By 

Douglas Herbert (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turning on the Girls (Paperback)

Jennifer Crusie meets Gloria Steinem and a good time is had by all.

The author makes no secret of her intentions here -- from the start she explicitly says that her sci-fi premise (the feminists have taken over and are trying to figure out what to do with all those incorrigible men) is not plausible. But who cares? As she says, if a man like Orwell can write a novel with talking animal characters, she's "entitled."

Although a light read, the author's detailed knowledge of the various genres of "erotica" and feminist writings about it (from de Sade to romance novels to Paglia to Ayn Rand) sustains the book intellectually.

The Orwell reference fits, but only if you think Animal Farm and not 1984. It definitely is not one of those angry, serious 1980s "feminist sci-fi" books like Margaret Atwood's "A Handmaid's Tale" or Suzy McKee Charnas'"Walk to the End of the Earth." If your expectations are more along the lines of Connie Willis' lighter works, the Bridget Jones series, or even ... romance queen Jennifer Crusie, you won't be disappointed.

One final warning -- despite the packaging, this book is not erotica.