I’ll call you ‘Sir’ and you call me ‘slut’
by John D. MichaelisSurprisingly, Black Lace have billed Wicked Games as a memoir, which throws up the question: when do a writer’s experiences stop being good copy for their (fictional) book and become something more based on fact? If this really is a memoir, then it runs curiously close to what I would imagine to be the publisher’s guidelines and style sheet for most mummy-porn with a submissive/dominant twist. In other words, girl meets boy, girl fancies boy, boy fancies girl, kinky relationship challenges arise and are overcome, boy and girl become as one.
There is the actual ‘wicked’ stuff. A veritable call-me-Sir, call-me-slut tick-box list of butt-plugs, anal sex, zebra-patterned love swings, fisting, tying-up, spanking and whipping. We have a male hero, a gnarly-handed, olive-skinned Greek Cypriot alpha male, whose charm, sophistication and vulnerability know no bounds. Then there’s the heroine-author, whose indecisive will-I-won’t-I toe-dipping into the chill waters of corporal punishment lasts conveniently far into the book. The heroine’s mandatory competition arrives belatedly in the shape of the hero’s ex-wife. This inevitable Mrs Danvers/Grace Pool figure, by now crucial to introduce some much-needed conflict, appears at last in a brief walk-on part. She’s late, disappointing and anti-climactic.
Despite the crops, kinbaku knots, throbbing cheeks and tiresome crises of self-confidence, this is really a straightforward and sequential reader, I married him novel – with spanking. There are no children in sight. Seemingly the author never has to worry about period pains, STD’s, contraception, baby-sitters or cystitis. Merely her own insecurities and his magnificent (but vulnerable) ego. And little or no effort is spent on creating a sense of place, so a reader sometimes feels he or she is in a sort of no-man’s land: it’s not the US, but neither is it quite Britain in any recognisable way. All authorial energies are diverted and applied towards exploring the blossoming relationship between herself and ‘Mr Kinky Sex God’. Fine for those who wish to do a bit of toe-dipping themselves, whether of the power-role-play, or the romancing-the-alpha-male, variety. Unfortunately it’s mundane for the rest of us. We’ve seen this movie before, Babe.
Kelly Lawrence isn’t a bad writer. It must be hard to let your characters ‘show you the way’ when they’re dancing strictly to the old Mills & Boon formula’s music. Despite this she makes a very fair job of it. But one day, might she not break out of this formulaic, crowd-pleasing straightjacket and tell us something about the human sexual condition that we haven’t already heard?
Kelly Lawrence, Wicked Games, published 4th July 2013 by Black Lace, paperback, 256 pp, ISBN 978-0753541715, RRP £7.99;
Kindle version £5.73 available now.
