Zoey’s fevered existence is sketched in alternating chapters of past and present. Her past buzzes with memories of a Catholic girlhood. Her present is still more addled, penning smutty books and acting as receptionist for women in leather. Author Estep ? who has performed slam poetry on MTV and appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, PBS, and other venues ? avoids the twin pitfalls of maudlin compassion and phony redemption in this vivid tale.
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The novel tells the story of Zoey, a smut writer and receptionist at a dungeon in New York City. She is a self-described "emotional idiot." The chapters alternate between her life as a child, growing up with a father who was shattered in a parachuting accident turned horse trainer, and her life as an adult, where she writes smut and answers the phone for dominatrixes because she only possesses "a touch of sadism." The book cycles between different examples of sex and addiction. Zoey relates her representations of sex as a Catholic school-girl to her career as a pornographer. Her first kiss at age twelve, sweaty and struggling on the floor of a school bus on the return trip from summer camp, is a precursor to her messy, chaotic relationships with men as an adult.The novel never dips into the saccharine realm of compassion or redemption. Instead Estep portrays "emotional idiots" with deadpan honesty. Estep strips her characters of all defenses, so that by the end of the novel, the reader finds that they have been stripped as well.
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