Peep Show - erotic book by Cleis Press Inc. - review by El-Jaro

Peep Show is a collection of erotica edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. It is a collection of 18 erotic stories with various twists, turns, plays, players, stages, and settings. The main reason I decided to pick out this book was that Rachel Kramer Bussel was the editor of another book that I really like. Admittedly, I’m not an erotica reader; it’s just not my cup of tea. I thought I’d give this collection a solid try and an honest attempt.

Even though the collection of stories has different authors, they mostly read the same way; first person narratives that take place in an array of locations around the world. One story takes place on a college campus, another at a luxurious hotel in Germany.

The characters range in age from early twenties to their fifties or higher. I believe that one of the overall themes of the book is that age doesn’t preclude the provocative or the erotic, a theme I really agree with.

The nuts and bolts of the book are solid. The typeset and layout are easy to read and fit together quite well; i.e. they didn’t add or take away from the reading experience. I wish they would’ve put in more pictures though. Sure, it’s a book about erotic encounters, but the only visual clues/incentives lay on the front cover (and duplicated on the back cover). A mixed written/drawn approach would’ve held my attention more too.

I would only recommend this book to someone if they are already into erotica. This was my first solid attempt at reading it outside of a printed magazine. To be honest, it didn’t really draw me into the world of erotica. It really did nothing to make me want to either. This book is only a collection of stories; nothing more, nothing less.

There were a few things in seemingly every story that seemed to connect the writing style. While the vocabulary wasn’t as bad as “He thrust his purple love soldier…”, there seemed to be a set vocabulary list of nouns and verbs that the writers continuously took from, vulgar and non-vulgar.

The only story that I read that broke the vocab list was “Clean and Pretty” by Donna George Storey. What set this story apart was the occasional use of Japanese in the story. I appreciated that, I really did. It engaged more than one part of the brain to the story. I had a hard time finishing the story too. There is a male character in the story with a (probably) common Japanese name that resonates with me, Hiro. I’m a big fan of the show Heroes and couldn’t help putting that Hiro in the place of this story’s Hiro.

If you are a regular reader of erotica, you will probably enjoy reading this book more than I did. I think that I did give it a fair try and realized it was not my cup of tea. I do have a few friends who are into it. I’ll let them borrow the book and they can give me their impressions of it.