Recent Reads

Turning on the girls, by Cheryl Benard

Some months back, I read a book titled Moghul Buffet that turned up in the library's stack of unwanted donations. I enjoyed the book's ironically detached narrative voice, a kind of "Dear Reader..." narrative persona that helped coat the brutal sexism of its setting in Pakistan and the murders, deceptions, and betrayals of its plot with just enough satirical distance to help readers get through the story, but not so much as to make light of the sickening reality on which it's based.

Early this year, after reading some positive reviews of a book titled Turning on the girls, I requested an interlibrary loan copy without noticing that it was by the same author. Once I finally realized that I'd seen the author's name before and looked her up in the library catalog, I realized that she was also the author of a nonfiction book about women in Afghanistan that I had glanced at a year or two ago. That's the last time I'll fail to notice her name.

Turning on the girls is another fictional story laced with satire. This time, Benard's targets are closer to home for Western readers. Her scattered targets include militant feminists, smarmy/sensitive New-Age-Guys, old-style male chauvinist pigs, political Utopians of all flavors, and more than anything else the strange, strange world of romance novels, erotica, and other sexual fantasies.

From the blurb on the front flap: "It's 2000something, the world has just been taken over by women, and things are wonderful, or at least they will be just as soon as the new rulers finish fixing things. And here's Lisa, a dedicated young employee of the new government, ready to do her part. Why does she have stacks of pornography, love stories, and romance novels on her desk? Well, that's her job! To come up with politically correct sexual fantasies for women. No more lovesick simpering, no more masochistic daydreams! Women are going to learn to be turned on by healthier, more dignified fantasies -- just as soon as Lisa can come up with some...."

Benard's targets are almost too easy, but she skewers them beautifully. I enjoyed both the comically exaggerated machismo of the male-chauvinist resistance movement and the equally exaggerated dogmatism of the New Order's Ministry of Thought (Department of Values and Fantasies, Subdepartment of Dreams). The well-meaning attempts of the New (feminist) Order to re-educate men are good for a few chuckles, too. But the parts of the book that had me literally doubled up with laughter were our earnest young heroine's efforts to research her assigned subject. Her bewildered reaction to romance novels, and the ludicrous but plausible examples of her research materials that the author helpfully supplies, are worth the price of the book. And that's without even mentioning poor Lisa's puzzled attempt to figure out Anne Rice's "Beauty" books.

Some of the plot hinges are a bit creaky and contrived, especially toward the end of the book, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Highly recommended. I'll be waiting for Benard's next book.