Chloe Thurlow's Blog, page 28

Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dorian Gray is one of those names that has become part of the language – the beautiful youth who remains beautiful while the portrait of himself hidden in the cupboard grows ugly and grotesque. This is Oscar Wilde at he best. And Oscar Wilde is always at his best. The book is full of wit, clever symbolism and serves as a reminder that fulfillment comes from loving people, not merely by being loved, a lesson modern celebrities should take note of.

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Review: Peter: A Darkened Fairytale

Peter: A Darkened Fairytale by William O’Brien

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I discovered from the author notes that William O’Brien resides in a small English village – the fertile inspiration of some of the land’s most imaginative writers, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Daphne du Maurier, the list is endless, as are the misty, dark tales they have spun.

In this tradition, we find the eponymous Peter from a Darkened Fairytale on his tenth birthday cast into a purple forest searching for a friend and finding himself in the company of an intriguing cast of magical characters including a white witch and a beautiful young elf named Slip who makes him feel nervous, as beautiful young elves tend to make growing boys feel.

Having devoured Tolkien and the JK Rowling books, I can still recall what moves and inspires pre-teens when it comes to reading and this surreal journey with its dark edges and subplots that tell morality tales in new and fresh ways will hit the spot. Highly recommended.

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Sex and the Stranger

The stranger didn’t say anything. He placed his bag on the sand and, as the mouth fell open, I saw that it contained a large conch shell. It was pink lipped, shiny and perfect.

There was a look of calculation in the man’s furrowed brow. Around his neck, he wore a pendant on a long leather thong. He lifted it over his head and, the way he did this, I thought for a moment that he was going to give it to me. Perhaps he expected me to lay back down on the dunes and have sex with him and this was a form of payment, a custom, the exchange of gifts, the pendant for me, my body, the only thing I had to trade.

The notion was both terrifying and vaguely absurd. Being naked was an invitation, explicit, unequivocal. I was aware that, as a woman, like all women, I chose clothes to make myself appear desirable, exposed, defenseless, but I was protected by the gossamer veil of those clothes. Once you strip and exhibit your body you demonstrate that you are willing, available. When the man at the party begins to unzip the back of your dress, unless you stop him, you have made a pledge, a covenant. Once he peels the dress from your shoulders you are already lovers.

These thoughts were fleeting and I would have plenty of time to ponder them more deeply. I was aware, as any girl of my age would be, that I had the sort of physique men admire, my breasts were full and I ran in the park weekends to keep my legs shapely, my waist trim, my cheek bones and hip bones prominent. Agh, I thought, all is vanity. I was aware, too, standing there before this stranger that, in truth, I had little experience of men, of the world, that for me sex had remained an immature endeavour that was never quite satisfactory and always over almost before it begun. That time when a man did begin to unzip the back of my dress I giggled and stopped him. Tease from Girl Trade – http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Trade-adve...

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Review: Tied to the Boss

Tied to the boss by Emma Rider

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After reading a book or short story that thrills me I like to go back to the writer’s author page on Amazon and find out who has stitched these words so cunningly together. Thus it was that I learn that Emma Rider as a child “was rarely seen without a book in her hand.” It shows. The first secret of good writing is reading – reading and more reading. Don’t tennis players play for 10,000 hours before they get really good?

Here we meet lovelorn Victoria Carson who has lusted after the suitably named Dominic, her boss, for five years and now finds herself under his nose, almost literally, as his personal assistant. I say “lusted”, but that’s not strictly true. Victoria’s fantasies are strictly of the boy meets girl variety, tender kisses, short engagements and they all live happily ever after (probably in Connecticut).

Dominic Nox, however, has rather more refined appetites. As he stealthily draws Victoria to the dark side – or should that be the bright side? – of the bed sheets, he unexpectedly misses his sweet little innocent secretary – a sudden twist that kept me up way past my bedtime and revealed, with its unexpected revelation, Ms Rider as a writer to watch.

“Tied to the Boss” is the first part of Emma Rider’s “Tied Series” and, having become enmeshed in the first, I feel inclined to follow the thread like Ariadne in the Labyrinth at Knossos to “Set to Be Tied” and the conclusion, “Wickedly Tied”; if indeed it is the conclusion – like `I Love Lucy’, some shows run for decades.

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The Adventure Begins

The approaching figure was a man in a turban and a loose blue tunic that billowed about him. He didn’t hurry and approached as you might a nervous animal, a unicorn perhaps. It occurred to me that the island might be private property, that I was trespassing. Not that it would matter. I obviously hadn’t stolen anything. In a way, I felt safe. I would be able to explain that I had swum too far and couldn’t endure the long swim back. I was certain there must be a boat and hoped the man in the blue tunic was a fisherman. I had left my money in a purse under my towel on the beach. I could pay him.

I stood, unsure what to do with my hands, whether it was best to hide my breasts, my pubic hair, a shade darker than my hair falling wet and sandy about my shoulders. I tried to picture myself as the stranger must have pictured me, and decided it was best to be cool, act as if being naked was the most natural thing in the world. I remained motionless, spine straight, breasts thrust forward. I felt embarrassed, of course, but also mischievous, proud, vaguely superior, a mass of swirling, changing emotions that swept through me under the gaze of the stranger.

As he drew nearer, his expression didn’t change. His face was as dark as mahogany, his features below the folds of his turban sharp and angular, a strong nose and piercing eyes shiny as chips of coal. He was carrying a large sack and, as he transferred it from one shoulder to the other, he made no pretense that he was studying my prominent nipples, my nervous smile, my green eyes trying to maintain a façade of self-confidence. From Girl Trade – the adventure begins -

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Naked and Damned

…..I was on an empty beach dotted with shells and carapaces of every size and shape, shells in a kaleidoscope of colors like a flower garden. There were starfish, razor shells I stepped around so that I didn’t cut my feet, open shells with the dried skeletons of minute life forms and shells being carried methodically by hermit crabs.

I saw bigger crabs with their swift sideways motion, running one way then the other, their eyes protruding like cartoon figures showing shock and surprise. I shivered with cold but the sun was heavy with the midday heat and I quickly warmed up as I picked my way through the shells to the dunes rising up at the edge of the beach.

The island had seemed small when I set out from La Gomera, but it was bigger than I had expected, the coastline stretching perhaps a mile in each direction before curving away from view. I climbed the dunes and lay down. I was exhausted. I may even have slept, for it was the sound of footsteps on the shingle that brought me back to my senses.

I was aware of two things simultaneously: the fact that help was on its way and, more worrying, that I was naked, no clothes, no phone, no watch. Nothing.

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Into The Dark Heart of Africa

The sea was cold. I moved in steady over-arm strokes through the water, warming myself as I gathered speed. I had read in my guide book that Christopher Columbus had stopped in La Gomera to take on fresh water and bananas before sailing in search of a western route to the Indies. He had stayed long enough to become the lover of a noble woman on the island and I couldn’t envisage anything more intense, more exciting, than making love with an adventurer before he sets off into the unknown.

It was a new pleasure swimming naked. I felt alive, wanton, a wild child who had escaped from captivity, the rush and clamor of the city, the underground train, the sense that life was racing away and no matter how hard I ran I’d never catch up. I enjoyed the rhythm of my limbs as I carved a path through the waves, my breath steady as I raised and lowered my head from the water. The sea that bore me forward was the Atlantic Ocean, the same vast corpus of water negotiated by Columbus in 1492, and it was hard to remember that in the Canary Islands I was further from Europe than the dark heart of Africa.

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Running Away

I wandered down to the water’s edge, shaded my eyes, and tried to judge the distance to the island. It was shimmering in the heat haze, green like a jewel on a surround of blue satin. La Gomera is one of the seven Canary Islands, but the sea is sprinkled with an archipelago of atolls and reefs; I had seen one rugged outcropping covered in coarse grass inhabited by goats, the bells about their necks showing that they belonged to somebody, that everything and everyone becomes a possession, is owned and spoken for, even slithers of rock in the middle of the sea.

On a whim, I threw my sunglasses back on my towel and strode into the surf breaking on the shoreline. The long hours of afternoon stretched vacantly before me and I thought idly I might leave La Gomera and travel on to El Hierro, the Meridian Island, the smallest of the Canaries, the furthest south, the furthest from London.

‘The further the better,’ I heard myself say and I wasn’t sure why, what I was thinking, what I was running away from? I swam naked into the waves and it felt as if I was at the beginning of a great adventure.  – from Girl Trade

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My Cheeks Flushed With Shame

I giggled to myself, stretched and let out a long sigh. It was the first time I had sunbathed nude and enjoyed the feeling of the sun warming my pink nipples. I squeezed the tips between my thumbs and first fingers, a tremulous feeling racing down my spine and making me squirm like a cat. My breasts in my cupped hands felt unusually full and it was blissful lying there with my eyes closed behind big sunglasses sliding my palms over the curve of my waist, my hip bones pushing through the skin, gleaming and slippery with sun oil, and down into the silky patch of my pubic hair.

Being naked outside in the sun and salt sea air makes you feel so sexy and it was sad being sexy all on my lonesome.Between my legs I discovered a hint of moistness. A stray finger slipped inadvertently into the open cleft, juices seeped over my sea shell lips and my cheeks flushed with sudden shame. What if someone were looking? I sat up and glanced to the left and right. The people further along the beach were folding their parasol and leaving. I watched their figures grow smaller as they vanished across the dunes. I was suddenly, completely, alone. From Girl Trade [image error]

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Naked on the Beach

Why I decided to swim out to the island I’ll never know. I had discarded my magazine. There was nothing worth reading. I had discarded my costume to try and fill in the white spaces around my tan. I had discarded my boyfriend without realizing when I went on holiday on my own that the hours would hang so heavily, that it was almost better to be with someone you didn’t like than to be lying there on the black sands of La Gomera with no one to talk to.

There were a few people further along the beach sitting under a red and white striped parasol. I could hear their laughter as it carried on the still air. I almost wished someone would walk by and say hello. Being naked might be a useful conversation opener. Or stopper! It was hard to know. Some people would be embarrassed, and if it were someone like Bobby, my ex, he’d stand gawping and then like a schoolboy say something stupid. That’s why he’d been discarded – tall, dark, handsome, he was a walking cliché, a boy masquerading as a man. I was 22 now. Nearly 23. It was time to grow up, time to put childish pleasures behind me. I’m a woman. I shouted the words at the sky – I’m a woman. I’m a woman. I’m a woman. Opening from Girl Trade

 

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