Never the Face: A Story of Desire by Ariel Sands

"He's way ahead of you, observed a small voice in my head. You don't often meet a man who makes you feel like an ingenue."

Our heroine, who is never named, is dissatisfied with her life and find everything, including sex, a bore. Over dinner with David, an old friend she's always had chemistry with, he quietly says, "I spent the weekend choosing a stick to beat you with." With these words a previously unknown world opens up to her. A world of submission and a dark intimacy that shakes everything she thought she knew about herself.

I am reading a lot of erotic fiction and erotica for a workshop I'm doing in September. Like our heroine, I am expanding my reading horizons even more so than usual. This book will not appeal to many readers. It is unflinching in its portrayal of Dominant/submissive relationships and there is no doubt that it is brutal and also much more. I came at it from the angle of understanding the characters involved and the intimacy and openness a relationship like this must posses. A hard and intriguing read that made me think outside my comfort zone. Ariel Sands is a pseudonym for an international bestselling nonfiction author. In an interview, she said she wanted to write with a pseudonym so there would be no preconceived notion of what the book would be like. 2011, 216 pages.