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The State of Montana
“Montana had never been to Montana,” begins Maxim Jakubowski’s new erotic shocker. Following on from the despair and tenderness of his collection Life in the World of Women, the savage and brutal darkness of It’s You That I Want to Kiss, and the bleak and explicit love story of Because She Thought She Loved Me, Maxim Jakubowski now offers his own version of The Story of O. In this gripping, heartbreaking tale – one with the modern zest of Bunuel’s Belle de Jour – a Montreal housewife seeks to fill her emptiness through anonymous encounters in Internet chat rooms and in airport hotel bars and bedrooms, and these adventures ultimately lead her to a terrifying sexual saga in a New York brownstone.
176 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1999
About the author
Maxim Jakubowski
287 books167 followersMaxim Jakubowski is a crime, erotic, and science fiction writer and critic.
Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.
He has worked in book publishing for many years, which he left to open the Murder One bookshop[1], the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out and, presently, since 2000, the crime reviewer for The Guardian. He is also the literary director of London's Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is one the leading editors in the crime and mystery and erotica field, in which he has published many major anthologies.
His novels include "It's You That I Want To Kiss", "Because She Thought She Loved Me", "The State Of Montana", "On Tenderness Express", "Kiss me Sadly" and "Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer". His short story collections are "Life in the World of Women", "Fools for Lust" and the collaborative "American Casanova". He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio and was recently voted the 4th Sexiest Writer of 2,007 on a poll on the crimespace website.
Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.
He has worked in book publishing for many years, which he left to open the Murder One bookshop[1], the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out and, presently, since 2000, the crime reviewer for The Guardian. He is also the literary director of London's Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is one the leading editors in the crime and mystery and erotica field, in which he has published many major anthologies.
His novels include "It's You That I Want To Kiss", "Because She Thought She Loved Me", "The State Of Montana", "On Tenderness Express", "Kiss me Sadly" and "Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer". His short story collections are "Life in the World of Women", "Fools for Lust" and the collaborative "American Casanova". He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio and was recently voted the 4th Sexiest Writer of 2,007 on a poll on the crimespace website.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 15, 2013
Starts off a little slow at first. Montana chats with people online, and occasionally has sex with some of them. Then, she receives a mysterious invitation from a man named John. She is flown to New York where she spends a week at the mercy of John and twelve others.
The story picked up when she took the trip to NY. Would YOU allow twelve strangers to have their way with you?
I got this out of the library. I was interested because it was erotic fiction. I write erotic fiction too (Anything For Georgetown And Other Stories is written under my pen name, Janell Elizabeth Meyer) and thought I'd give it a try. For me, it's the foreplay that gets me not, not necessarily the sex act itself. This was okay, but I don't think I'd read it again.
The story picked up when she took the trip to NY. Would YOU allow twelve strangers to have their way with you?
I got this out of the library. I was interested because it was erotic fiction. I write erotic fiction too (Anything For Georgetown And Other Stories is written under my pen name, Janell Elizabeth Meyer) and thought I'd give it a try. For me, it's the foreplay that gets me not, not necessarily the sex act itself. This was okay, but I don't think I'd read it again.
August 10, 2013
I ordered this book to read as a part of an Erotica Book Club I've joined. I have always loved erotica. Started reading it when I was 15 with Anaïs Nin. I've enjoyed the darker erotica of Nira/Sussa, The The Story of O and Marquis de Sade. I also occasionally like the more erotic romance work out there like whatAmelia James has done. State of Montana doesn't manage to accomplish the requirements for either side of the coin.
Unsympathetic and dry, the main character Adrienne/Montana cheats on her husband emotionally and physically but love/passion/fulfillment still elude her. The only person she finds a real connection to is "mk" an online suitor. The premise of the book is engaging enough, with a woman seeking pleasure or understanding through anonymous sex in hotels and online chatrooms. However, it's impossible for the reader to feel anything but annoyance for the character herself. Perhaps this is because of the use of 3rd person omniscient story telling, which keeps the reader at a distance from the emotional life of the characters.
The sections written in 1st person were much more engaging, however, the use of a journal style reporting maintained a distance which, for erotica to be truly evocative, must be removed. The journals themselves were painfully short and shallow. I would have preferred each of them be fleshed out into a full chapter.
The book is written by a British man but set in Canada. This drew me out of the story a number of times because the language used is so British at times in a way an American or Canadian would never do. ie.: Childminder instead of Nanny, "fag end of a business trip" - what the hell does that mean?, email number instead of email address.
The book was also riddled with an undercurrent of racist and sexist themes. Not in the fun, lets expose our inner darkness through erotica, way, but in the the author's real thought leaked through way. i.e. on sight Montana knows the Chaffeur is Afro-Carribean as opposed to Arfo-American. Um, how exactly? The only scenes the only black characters are in are highly racist with a strong "man servant' tone and he is only described in terms of his usefulness and size of his cock. I prefer my black men a little less steeped in racial assumptions, thank you.
All in all I was unimpressed. I know it's supposed to be a retelling of The Story of O and while it's been a very long time since I read that one, this book does it a disservice.
Unsympathetic and dry, the main character Adrienne/Montana cheats on her husband emotionally and physically but love/passion/fulfillment still elude her. The only person she finds a real connection to is "mk" an online suitor. The premise of the book is engaging enough, with a woman seeking pleasure or understanding through anonymous sex in hotels and online chatrooms. However, it's impossible for the reader to feel anything but annoyance for the character herself. Perhaps this is because of the use of 3rd person omniscient story telling, which keeps the reader at a distance from the emotional life of the characters.
The sections written in 1st person were much more engaging, however, the use of a journal style reporting maintained a distance which, for erotica to be truly evocative, must be removed. The journals themselves were painfully short and shallow. I would have preferred each of them be fleshed out into a full chapter.
The book is written by a British man but set in Canada. This drew me out of the story a number of times because the language used is so British at times in a way an American or Canadian would never do. ie.: Childminder instead of Nanny, "fag end of a business trip" - what the hell does that mean?, email number instead of email address.
The book was also riddled with an undercurrent of racist and sexist themes. Not in the fun, lets expose our inner darkness through erotica, way, but in the the author's real thought leaked through way. i.e. on sight Montana knows the Chaffeur is Afro-Carribean as opposed to Arfo-American. Um, how exactly? The only scenes the only black characters are in are highly racist with a strong "man servant' tone and he is only described in terms of his usefulness and size of his cock. I prefer my black men a little less steeped in racial assumptions, thank you.
All in all I was unimpressed. I know it's supposed to be a retelling of The Story of O and while it's been a very long time since I read that one, this book does it a disservice.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews