Tag Archives: erotic

A Lush and Sensual Greek Myth Retelling: The Palace of Eros by Caro de Robertis

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The Palace of Eros by Caro de Robertis cover

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It’s no secret that Anne Carson has inspired many a sapphic love affair with ancient Greek myths, or that stories like Malinda Lo’s Ash, Sarah Diemer’s The Dark Wife, and a vast world of AU fanfiction showed that the threads from which most modern myths are spun could also be woven in ways that mirrored the desires in sapphics’ hearts.

So I am delighted to review Caro de Robertis’s The Palace of Eros. A retelling of a classic Greek myth, this decidedly mature version of Eros and Psyche’s story is so beautiful in its refusal to be reductive, and so human in the ways de Robertis lets their characters be selfish, arrogant, misguided, desirous, demanding, and just messy, messy sapphics that are still capable of tender love and care. There is hurt, there is pain, but there are also two lovers coming together time and time again to work through their difficulties.

You know the bare bones of the narrative. Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty and fertility, gets peeved when people dare to compare Psyche’s mortal’s beauty to her own immortal one. So she sends Eros to force Psyche to fall in love with a monster of a man…only for Eros to end up falling for her and whisking her away to an enchanted palace. Like most Greek mythology that was translated into the English imagination by a bunch of misogynistic male aristocrats whose wealth and education came at the expense of an empire of exploitation (so, most Greek mythology), this story is ripe for the personal projection of all sorts of sexist nonsense. But in de Robertis’ capable hands, those bare bones are reincarnated into something much more caring and empathetic: a beautiful parable about the crushing weight and isolation that can come from hiding the truth of yourself, as well as the double-edged fragility of rooting your sense of self and power in physical attractiveness.

It is also a defiant, joyous, sensual ode to queer desire and passion. Living up to the title, the novel explores various aspects of the erotic throughout the POV heroines’ journey to self-actualization. I’m very pleased to say that calling this prose more wonderfully mythical than many a translation would likely make Joseph Campbell roll in his grave. So I shall. While it starts off a little choppy and takes a chapter or two to find its flow, it then becomes a nuanced take on the importance of art in developing one’s sense of expression and liberation—about the ways mistakes in safe environment leads to innovation and a better understanding of yourself and the world around you.

This isn’t some two-bit story about a femme being whisked away by a (relatively more) masc partner and then having all her problems resolved (and her character flattened) by a shower of money and/or magical prowess. This is a novel that captures how finally practicing a pottery technique to perfection can lead to the same rush of climactic satisfaction as being with an especially attentive lover. Time, focus, and care tis needed for both.

Finally, historical-esque fiction that doesn’t feel the need to fade-to-black on me! It’s not a bodice ripper, not by a long shot, but nor is de Robertis shy about showing their characters’ more carnal needs. The prose doesn’t linger too long on anatomical terms or mechanistic descriptions about what is going where exactly, instead choosing to ratchet up the sensuality through metaphor and sensory imagery that give readers strong visuals while leaving enough room for personal imaginations to get some say in the final vision.

Did I mention the absolutely poetic ways this book describes intimacy?! It’s enough to make a sapphic swoon.

But all the heartwarming lushness that blooms in isolation cannot remain forever insulated. As Psyche grows more comfortable in herself as a sensual and sensory being, her imagination expands. And as Eros grows more comfortable with the idea of being loved for all the parts once deemed monstrous, the two’s growing sense of possibility starts to chafe at the restrictions imposed by others’ petty insecurities—which themselves betray deeper anxieties about the status quo. With their families’ desire to defend the status quo they’ve sacrificed their dreams to creating violent storm clouds on the horizon, Eros and Psyche must reckon with who they want to be and become in order to keep their blossoming love alive.

In that way, it is also a timely book, and one I will recommend when people ask for something romantic, sensual, and ultimately hopeful about the way queer desire—both for others and for our truest selves— can be a catalyst for change.

Who Will Enjoy This?

  • Readers who enjoy the gentle pacing and focus on creative work in cozy fantasy but also works that grapple with the power dynamics of literary and historical conventions.
  • Readers with a deep nostalgia for femslash Greek Mythology AU fanfiction (there was some gold in those hills).
  • Readers looking for prose that fully evokes all the sensorial dimensions of the word “lush”.

Decadence and Decay: Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary

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the cover of Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk

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Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary (March 5, 2024) is a considered, sorrowful, masterfully atmospheric story about mourning and the costs of surviving outside of society’s protective frameworks. It is also the story of two women in conflict with their inherited and inherent longings around family, companionship and intimacy—one from the past and one from sometime like our present.

Echoes of old-school gothic—in the vein of Rachilde or Poe—permeate Yuszczuk’s prose. And much like those bygone writers, her story is one that poetically captures the complicated moralities of relationships entangled in sociopolitical and material histories.

This is not a vampire romance in the modern sense. The seductions are married to viscera-spilling violence, the decadence marred by decay*, and a sense of bated unsettlement lingers over both the streets and lives our first narrator moves through in her quest for survival. Though she has centuries of experience, she is not immune to the same vices she exploits in others, and is in turn refreshingly slow to condemn them.

The second narrator is much less glamorous. A recent divorcee who’s barely coping with her mother’s terminal illness and hospitalization, our second narrator is struggling but refuses to admit that her white-knuckling isn’t sustainable. That she cannot go on as she always has, that relationships cannot continue in a state of suspended animation. While the past is punctuated by conclusive events and deaths, the present lingers—plastic flowers and medical equipment keep memories alive past well-meaning. We feel the narrator’s frustration, her alienation and desperation and heartache.

I enjoyed the narrators’ lack of hypocrisy and abundance of interiority. I also appreciated how the novel retains all of their dark and stylistic delight, without the aching inconclusiveness or censor-friendly endings of its pulpy and gothic paperback predecessors—even if the title and cover art are practically begging for an appositive colon.

It’s a clever title, and a colloquial pun. But Yuszczuk’s novel complicates the construction of lust as a base instinct on par with hunger or titular thirst. Lust, desire, eroticism and art are all defiant distractions from the inevitable, and their fulfillment requires the sort of communication and connection that those most basic activities do not.

The second half deals more with grief and more clearly reveals veins of Sheridan Le Fanu’s influence. Some of the scenes reminded me of reading Carmilla for the first time. The tension, the confusion, the delicate language building into bloody, sensual intimacy that is hardly explicit but unquestionably erotic.

Thirst is the sort of book that benefits from second reading or a slow first one. It’s not heavy-handed, but it would be a rich digestif to Gilbert and Gubar’s 1979 opus—and is more than a little likely to appeal to fans of that book. While most of the women’s anxieties are tangible and described in grounded detail, their phantastic responses (as well as the ways wealth, privilege, generational fears and architecture are represented) squarely situate this work within the gothic tradition. I also take this as a historical win— we’re past the period when “hysteria” was a valid diagnosis and when women had to veil lived traumas under layers of metaphor.

As with most translated literature, particularly ones that are heavily descriptive, subtly humorous, or in conversation with historical works, there is a chance that a little something may have been lost in translation. And while I haven’t yet read the original, I can attest that Heather Cleary’s translation maintains a lush, tactile lyricism that swept me into the history, even when the perspective was contemporary enough to reference the recent Coronavirus pandemic. 

The vibes were, to put it succinctly, immaculate.

Content warnings: violence, euthanasia

*Some might argue that the close juxtaposition of decay only heightens decadence by contrast. I personally feel that it’s more about how people seek out beauty and small pleasures even in dreary circumstances, but you do you.

A Fraught, Erotic Fever Dream: Mrs. S by K. Patrick

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the cover of Mrs S.

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Every so often I read a novel that just has the perfect summer energy about it—and even though I read a review copy of Mrs. S by K. Patrick (Europa Editions, 2023) in the spring, I was thinking of summer the entire time. Perfect for fans of novelists like Emma Cline, Mona Awad, or Leon Craig, Mrs. S is an unforgettable novel. 

This novel is the kind of fascinating, character-driven historical fiction I’m drawn to. Set at an English boarding school sometime in the second half of the twentieth century (the timeline isn’t clear), an unnamed narrator arrives under the position of matron at the school. As butch lesbian from Australia, our narrator feels like an outsider in more ways than one. That is, until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s alluring and captivating wife. At first, Mrs. S seems to be the narrator’s opposite in many ways—primarily through her self-assuredness and her carefully performed femininity—but as the summer wears on and the two women grow closer together, the narrator comes to realize that the two have far more in common than she thinks. 

A lesbian affair conducted in secret at a British boarding school? There is no novel I would rather read. Plus, a butch lesbian protagonist is a refreshing perspective. I read Mrs. S in one sitting, and it was exactly the kind of fraught, erotic, fever dream novel I hoped it would be. I loved the narrator’s insular personality and her struggles with her queerness were issues I could both sympathize and identify with. Although this novel is framed as the narrative of an affair, it is really more about the narrator and her thoughts, feelings, and journey to come to terms with who she is—a journey that isn’t close to complete by the novel’s end. 

The narrator’s relationship with Mrs. S has the kind of chaotic, fated, anxiety-inducing intensity that I hoped for. Mrs. S has an untouchable, unknowable air about her that always keeps the narrator (and us) on the outside, even when she appears to let us in. Nevertheless, we fall in love(?) with her alongside the narrator, and the second half of the novel seems to hurtle toward the end. While it seemed to take a long time to get to any kind of movement in the plot between these two characters, I now think that that’s a result of this novel really being about the protagonist’s trying to find a place in the world. 

Speaking of places, the boarding school setting is so fabulous, and there’s a reason why queer authors return again and again to the idea of a girls’ boarding school, a place that supposed inculcate “proper” heterosexist codes of femininity and often ends up complicating them instead. Mrs. S’s status as the headmaster’s wife further undermines the “power” of the boarding school as an institution and I think there’s so much to be said about the usefulness of this setting for Patrick. The atmosphere of this novel—contributed to by Patrick’s sensual descriptions—is part of what kept me reading. 

I highly recommend Mrs. S as your queer novel of the summer! 

Please add Mrs. S to your TBR on Goodreads and follow K. Patrick on Twitter. 

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history. 

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.