Gentlemen Callers

by Corinne Hoex, Caitlin O'Neil (Translator)

Every night when she goes to sleep, a woman dreams of erotic encounters with different men. She dreams of being the sponge squeezed to foaming in a gas station attendant's hand, and of twining her bare skin with a sea lion's thick pelt under the watchful eye of the sea lion trainer. From a gas station attendant to a sea lion trainer, a watchmaker to a teacher, a furrier to an astrologer, each evening's new encounter is more sensual and extravagant than the last.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Belgium, Erotica, Adult Fiction

156 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2022

About the author

Corinne Hoex est une écrivaine belge contemporaine qui vit à Bruxelles. Elle est née le 13 juillet 1946.
Licenciée en histoire de l'art et archéologie, elle a travaillé comme enseignante, chargée de recherches et documentaliste, et a publié plusieurs études sur les arts et traditions populaires. Depuis 2001, elle publie des romans et de la poésie.

Prix
*Le Grand Menu a obtenu le Prix Littéraire 2001 des Amis des Bibliothèques de la Ville de Bruxelles, ainsi que le Prix Littéraire Soroptimist 2002 de la Romancière Francophone.
*Ma Robe n'est pas froissée a obtenu le Prix Indications du Jeune Critique 2008, ainsi que le Prix Emma Martin 2008 de l’Association des Écrivains Belges de Langue Française, et que le Prix Gauchez-Philippot 2010.
*Décidément je t'assassine a obtenu le Prix Marcel Thiry 2010.
*Contre Jour a obtenu le Prix Delaby-Mourmaux 2010 de l’Association des Écrivains Belges de Langue Française.
*En 2013, Corinne Hoex a reçu le Prix Félix Denayer de l'Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Françaises de Belgique pour l'ensemble de son œuvre et plus particulièrement pour Le Ravissement des femmes.

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slightly curious collection of tales from award-winning, Belgian author Corinne Hoex, these are presented as a series of dreams in which an unknown woman fantasises about erotic or titillating encounters with a range of men, each identified only by their professions from bakers to pirates to butchers. But anyone hoping for something salacious will be disappointed, instead these are playful, eccentric, fable-like pieces that fall somewhere between prose and poetry. They’re filled with moments of gentle comedy, with a decidedly surreal flavour, as the dreaming woman is transformed, a fly buzzing on the baker’s cake, a piece of stone awaiting the sculptor’s desires. Hoex indirectly comments here on the objectification of women, and subverts the notion of the male serial seducer, drawing on a rich history of French, semi-erotic writing. Each piece is prefaced by a passage or quotation from a literary source which operates as an unexpected inspiration for the story that follows. I was also reminded at times of Anne Serre and her blend of classical and fairy-tale elements in The Governesses. Although not totally to my taste, many of these were strangely fascinating, light and surprisingly funny but a little cloying if read in quick succession. Smoothly translated here by Caitlin O’Neil.

Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Dalkey Archive Press for an ARC

[Book Clubbed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty good for sexts, pretty bad for fiction.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Lord! What a large bed you have! Are you expecting company?

Full of wit and sensuality, this is a piece of writing where each section takes a quotation as heading such as the one above from primarily, though not exclusively, a male writer, often French (Baudelaire, Maupassant, also Mme de Sevigny, amongst others) and then follows it with a short fantasising episode that is sexual/sensual (not explicit, not smut) in which the implicitly female narrator muses herself into a situation with a man named only via his occupation (the butcher, the security guard, the priest).

It's beautifully written, it's filled with wit, but it's also theoretically informed: the narrator metamorphoses herself in her head into the wet sponge squeezed by a car-washer, into a basin, into a wave of the sea, into a map of America (the cartographer). The dynamic thus switches from the often male-authored short heading to the expansive fantasy of the female narrator, so that it's the quotation which is initiator but which also gets marginalised and subsumed within the female creative imagination.

It reminded me Ovid's Heroides where female lovers make interventions into male-authored classical myth and epic thus decentering canonical narratives, mixed up with the bodily transformations of Ovid's Metamorphoses - and the cartographical fantasy of 'I love the Americas!' is an echo of John Donne's 'O my America, my new found land'.

The whole thing is only short but is a fascinating take on power shifts and literary transformations, on multiple gendered sexual roles and the sensuality of language - I loved it!

Many thanks to Dalkey Archive for an ARC via Edelweiss.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amuse-bouche of short fantastical tales depicting vaguely sensual encounters with gentlemen of various professions. The stories are all prefaced with or inspired by (more interesting) quotes from Baudelaire, Zola, and other Gallic Greats, and in tone are the very epitome of très charmant, mademoiselle. Bland and uninspired prose wrapped in an Oulipian kimono—this is super-lightweight fare from the once-peerless Dalkey Archive.

[Thea · Rating 5 out of 5]

So up my alley it’s not even funny.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surrealist foreplay.

Suggestive, and merely suggestive, never explicit.

Clever. Poetic. I don’t think anything like this has ever been done in the world of erotica.

[qamar⋆｡°✩]

a series of vignettes of the narrator's dreams featuring very short but vivid descriptions of her encounters with various men, primarily identified by their occupation (eg. 'the butcher', 'the mailman', 'the geographer' etc). it's erotic with a literary indulgence, never becoming sexual and rather satiating itself with prose that is heatedly sensual and teasingly suggestive. there's a lot of erotic metaphors and a lot of playfulness, but i think the only reason i continued was because of corinne hoex's beautiful prose. most of it felt almost like poetry, and had a rich, lyrical touch to it. i cannot really rate this one since i realised that i simply wasn't the target audience for the book as i read on: i don't usually read erotic fiction (i only meant to try this form of it to see if my tastes would change) and most of it was just excessively heterosexual for me. however, i am willing to explore the author's poetry more!

[baraa]

interesting…

[nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

READING VLOG

Anyone can be an object of desire, but who is the subject of desire?

A woman dreams and dreams until she is desired by men she has never met. Men she has come across in passing, in pure imagination, only to be felt as soap, as marble, as object. Where does desire begin? At the hands? In the eyes? At what point is it felt? In the core? By grazing? By grace?

She dreams and dreams until she is nothing. She dreams and dreams until the desire is overwhelming. She dreams and dreams until she is desire herself. Until she is invention. Until she is invented.

Woman is absence of the self when felt so deeply, when feeling is a despair tied at the mercy of wanting and needing.

Short. Sweet. Savored in thirst that hollows into hunger. Best read when your naked and lonesome, listening to old EP's by Kelela and FKA Twigs

water me gomenasai~

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dreamy (literally), surreal, and horny. Bite-sized stories about sensations and the erotic possibilities thereof. Quite enjoyable, very silly, kinda hot--much like the sex(?) the narrator is having/dreaming about/imagining herself into.

[Amy Biggart · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s more of a 3.5 rounded down. I know exactly what this collection of vignettes was trying to do, but throughout I couldn’t help but want for more from the author. This is a collection of one woman’s sexual dreams about men (both real and imagined) in her world. More than that, the author consistently relied on one narrative device: metaphor. This woman is a sponge, she is a letter in her mailman’s sack, she is sand on the beach. It was just very repetitive. The writing is good; and for people who love this concept I could totally see how this would be five stars.

I think I’m realizing that novellas that discuss sexual awakenings are just… not for me? Nothing against them, just nothing I care for. Anyway that’s all.

[Morgan Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

While some of the encounters that the narrator experienced with different professions, I enjoyed, I found many of them to be more whimsical and playful than I had expected so wasn't a big of them.

[Kaylin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it.

Artistic erotic dream journal

[Emma Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experimental, erotic, depraved.

Perfect book for me

[Ramya Ramani · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

[madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

horny

[R · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m either too stupid, too sober or not kinky enough for this. If this book is an insight into the author’s mind, Freud would have had a field day. This author needs therapy. Like serious therapy. So fucking weird.
Rape and beastiality involved.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are the most peculiarly erotic fantasies I have ever read. Highly recommended for anyone into women's sexuality and/or literature in translation.

[Happy Mai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmmmm I expected the stories to be a little spicier but I guess it’s hard to do when the stories are literally 1-2 pages long. Didn’t hate it, but didn’t love it either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[BookAddict ✒ La Crimson Femme · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoyed the mind fuckery of Being John Malkovich, this book may be for you. If you are looking for bubble gum erotic sex, this book may be a tad too esoteric for you. Kudos to the translator for this book because each chapter is beautifully written in a concise couple of pages packed with strong metaphoric imagery.

To read the rest of my review, click on the image below to see it on my website

[Carolyn DeCarlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful, weird, and pretty raunchy little book. An older woman’s sex fantasies laid out as nightly dreams, with each short chapter a vignette into the proclivities of a different man with a different, specific profession. Their interests inform their style in the bedroom, and so do hers. Sometimes she is a human, sometimes an animal or a wave. My first read of this author who is well known in Belgium and in the French language, I’d be curious to pick up something else of hers and see how it compares to the playful tone and frivolous subject of this one.

[OGC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn’t have loved this more—the eroticization of the mundane, the surrealism of some of the fantasies. The distinctly female way the desire is often coupled with some sort of transformation, some embodiment of the inanimate—woman as octopus, as slab of marble, as sand. The word choice was wonderfully deliberate; the sensuality is bound up in the moment Hoex chooses “quiver” over another word, in the image of a mailman sliding deft fingers into the opening of a letter.

[Peter J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stopped in Big Sur at The Henry Miller Memorial Library and urged on by the sheer literary atmosphere decided to try this title out. (Their website contains this which guided by browsing and I saw reflected in their stock: " The Henry Miller Library guarantees all guests the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. It is not the proper role of the Library to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. There are many books and stories to read, to write, to tell, and to listen to. We hope to learn from different ideas, why and how they come to be, and what values they’re premised on. To always critique and argue in good-faith. ")

And now more about the actual book and not where I found it:

Maybe I wasn't in the right head space for this book. That may be likely to happen when you roll the dice on a unknown title. I thought the overall conceit was interesting but wished for more of a through line or connective tissue from one piece to the next. I had a little bit more success when approaching it as I might a poetry collection (a tact I decided to try after discovering Hoex is a prolific poet). Once I got into that mindset I began to enjoy some of pieces in isolation. But I don't know if that's what I'm supposed to do. So this is ultimately a disappointment, but I don't regret my dice roll.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pinch more than a month’s worth of erotic dreams, Corinne Hoex’s Gentleman Callers recalls 33 of the narrator’s intimate encounters with men, from a gas station attendant to a burglar. And, as in the waking world, not every lover she meets in a dream is a dream lover but, unlike the waking world, most are. Because the sex occurs in dreams, the descriptions of the narrator’s erotic encounters are more metaphorical than anatomically correct. Still, one gets the point, and favorably so.

Beyond that formal conceit, Hoex adds another: pairing each dream encounter with an epigram from a French writer, such as Baudelaire, Madame de Sévigné, Maupassant, and others, so that the erotic encounter is an elaboration upon the epigram. The dreams are short—only one or two pages each—but cover a lot a ground, as it were, and satisfactorily.

Fun, sexy, smart, and imaginative, just as a good lover (and book) should be.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

idk this was so weird?? i don't really know what to say or how to accurately rate this, mainly because i expected something a bit different.

gentlemen callers is a collection of very short sexual encounters between a nameless, dreaming narrator and various different men, all characterised by their profession. it's basically just a bunch of wet dreams.

i expected more in-depth short stories, instead the dreams were between two and three pages long, which made it a really quick read. the prose was beautiful and i really enjoyed the way the narrator described most of the encounters. it's obviously a very horny book, but the language was flowery.

i don't really know who i'd recommend this to. i guess it might be a fun quick summer read, if you're interested in reading about some horny dreams lol

[Mary Kearney]

this was an interesting little book by a Belgian writer wherein she fantasizes about different "gentlemen callers" ranging from the butcher to the groomer to a young priest. In her short (1 page) dreams she turns herself into various items such as a sponge held in the Gas Station Attendant's hand to a forest wherein the Hunter lurks. It is erotic in the true sense of the word....there is not a "forbidden" act or work in it. Just sensual.

I don't know where I read about this erotic classic comparable to Anais Nin's LITTLE BIRDS OR DELTA OF VENUS but it is definitely an amusing, sensual, and interesting fast read. What an imagination!!

[Paulina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun collection of vignettes all about a woman's erotic dreams and fantasies, each featuring a different man that she encounters in her day to day life.

They are quirky, mostly funny, though some can verge on quite awkward.

There's really not much to say about this super short book. Do pick it up if you want to read some funny and super fast erotic fantasies. There are some fun metaphors and, while it can get repetitive if you just read it all in one go, I can imagine just picking it up once in a while for a quick story and then setting it down until next time.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the idea of this is better than the execution; it's a really great idea, though, I almost gave it an extra star just for the premise. The writing is good, but it can't decide between erotic and comedic - I think if the author had just committed to the former and let the latter happen naturally, rather than labouring to make sure the reader knows it's tongue-in-cheek (pun intended??), it would've been amazing. It's very short and I think I'd still recommend for the weirdness, but I'd adjust expectations first.

[Nabeeha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun easy ready. Very vanilla but expected that based on when this book is from.

I did really like the way she wrote about her dreams like the double entendres and the way that she would mask outrightly saying what was happening. It was creative and she really went the extra mile. Wordsmith behaviour.

The way this unnamed narrator remembers her dreams though? Could not be me. When I wake up my dreams are incoherent.

3/5 stars
May 12, 2022

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was gonna be a little hornier based on the blurb but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I think the pomp and circumstance of the language is funny and also her exclamation points are total lols bc it's like you're talking about sensuality but you're so stoked!!!! The vignette about the beach attendant reminds me of the movie 'the lost daughter.' It's cool that people who were born in 1946 love to fuck just like we do <3 am i allowed to curse on this platform