Marco Vassi's The Saline Solution

The Saline Solution by Marco Vassi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I’d never heard of this or Marco Vassi before stumbling across a copy of The Saline Solution in a second-hand place, and thought the work would be a dated curio. I did not know, therefore, he was a critically admired writer of the (mainly) 1970s and ‘80s counter culture, one that produced works like this on matters of sexual exploration. All discredit to me.
A melancholy sometimes disturbing novel about the risks we take when we engage in casual sex outside established relationships, or an “affair of impersonal intensity,” and the dangers of sexual freedom. Not least, the aftermath when plans for an “unencumbered” affair go awry. The book is very much about sex even when sex if not taking place – its motivations, pleasures, dangers, and consequences. For all the bleakness, the sexual description is sensuous and liberated, and relief is provided by Vassi’s honed sense of the absurd.

It has made me want to give Vassi’s ‘The Erotic Comedies’ a try next before another of his novels.




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