Two Sexcerpts...

...from books I've read recently. First, Ivy Pochoda's description of sex with a magician whose magic isn't based on trickery or deception but on real magic, from The Art of Disappearing.

"I knew she wanted all the details, but I preferred to keep to myself how Toby's hands flew across my body in a maniacal sign language. When I could have sworn that he was massaging my shoulders, suddenly he was tickling my toes. And when I looked at my toes, I noticed that his hands had moved to my hair. And all the time it appeared that he hadn't taken his lips from mine. Sometimes he managed to make the bed vanish as if we were floating toward the ceiling in an erotic levitation. Sometimes the ceiling itself seemed to disappear and the room flooded with the sky. After it was over, after my magician's hands, which had doubled and redoubled as we reached the finale of our private magic show, had collapsed onto the sateen sheets, I woke up to find the remnants of the conjuring pressed into my body. I found coins on my inner thighs, poker chips on my lower back, the jack of diamonds stuck to my left buttock."

I'm on page 97. So far, the writing style of Harvard graduate and Olympic squash player Ivy Pochoda reminds me of Audrey Niffenegger. I never did read The Time-Traveler's Wife, but I did read Her Fearful Symmetry. Both The Art of Disappearing and Her Fearful Symmetry, I suppose, would be considered magical realism. TAOD also slightly reminds me of Christopher Priest's The Prestige, insofar as they deal with stage magicians whose talents lie not only in showmanship. Like Angiers in the movie version of The Prestige, Toby has lost a lovely assistant in a water tank - the difference is that while (minor spoiler) Angiers' wife drowned (it's completely different in the book), Toby's assistant simply disappeared.





Second, from Carrie's Story by Molly Weatherfield (review forthcoming April 4, along with an interview with the author). This snippet takes place at the pony farm, where Carrie is taking part in pony play training.

"We passed a stall where I could see Mr. Finch's shoulders and the back of his...head and hear his moans. I could also see a chain attached to the stall's back wall, trailing down the wall and onto the ground. The chain was moving rhythmically, and I knew, even though I couldn't see her, that attached to its other end, in the straw on the floor of the stall, was Stephanie on her knees with Mr. Finch in her mouth."

I am forever ruined by Person of Interest - now whenever I encounter a character named Mr. Finch, I will think of Harold. Oh, Mr. Finch, you have been very naughty indeed.

But not quite as naughty as Carrie. Her current relationship has introduced her to a whole new repertoire of sexual moves - although nothing as magical as Toby's wizard moves.