Written by: Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbe
First line: Tell me a story.
Why you should read this book: This is probably what you’d
refer to as a “problem” book, its problems being at least twofold: first,
although it's billed as erotica, I’m having trouble
expressing what differentiates it from intelligent, thoughtful pornography; and second, its
premise, as near as I can tease it out, is that childhood sexuality is a
wonderful, magical, innocent, and exciting thing that should be fully expressed
in childhood, but which is inevitably corrupted, exploited, or destroyed by
adult interference. In a gracious but unusual hotel in Austria prior to the
start of World War One, three women chance to meet, and, as they’re heroines in
an Alan Moore story, it should surprise no one that they are the grownup
incarnations of three beloved children’s book characters: Alice of Alice in
Wonderland, Wendy Darling of Peter Pan, and Dorothy Gale of the Wizard or Oz.
However, Moore reimagines their backstories as metaphors for the taboo details
of some very different kinds of fantasies, and, in telling their tales, the
three women learn to release the shame, fear, and tension their experiences
have evoked in them and recover the shameless, fearless sexual freedom of
unspoiled childhood.
Why you shouldn’t read this book: You don’t want to look at
cartoon pornography.
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