5 Books That Will Change The Way You Think About Sex
“Boring, some confused laughter, mostly scary,” would read my review of sex education at school. Featuring a comically vintage video of predominately sad-looking teen parents, graduating to gory photography where the subtext was, simply: your crush will probably give you gonorrhoea. Just say no. It would be funny if it weren’t so shameful.
I can’t help but think about one of my most treasured coffee table books, discovered tucked away in a charity shop: a first edition of Dr Alex Comfort’s seminal 1972 guide, The Joy Of Sex: how rare this description must have been back then. A permission, of sorts, to allow people to see sex as something that had the potential to be f**king wonderful.
Over 50 years since its revelatory release, thankfully there’s a constellation of narratives which explore the nuances of intimacy beyond the binary. Ones that have taught me that seduction is a dance, not a destination. In pursuit of more pleasure? More joy? From manifestos rewriting the erotic script to stories that lay bare the multiplicity of desire, I encourage you to add these reads to your library.
1. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Winterson’s words are impossible not to fall truly, madly and deeply in love with. This alluring novel chronicles a passionate affair between the narrator – nameless and genderless – and a married woman. Brave and poetic prose that forces you to confront and undo constructed notions of sexuality. It’s an ode to loving without limits. Love which demands expression.
2. Want by Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson’s ‘sex symbol’ status was inescapable in the ‘90s. Today, that title still holds up for the actor, though its meaning has (luckily) progressed: it’s about inhabiting a sensual self-confidence and a craving to educate. Anderson’s anthology features a curation of 174 anonymous sexual fantasies, submitted from women all over the world. Compelling, candid and deliciously unfiltered.
3. You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Sex scenes can so easily be unsexy. Either too timid, or too farcical. The acclaimed Nigerian author’s latest novel is the perfect antidote: they’re hot. The protagonist – a bisexual artist and 29-year-old widow – is grappling with unending grief and opening herself up to new sexual horizons (her new boyfriend’s father is among those she becomes entangled with). A beautiful rendering of the irrationality of attraction and the power of connection.
4. Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel
I picked this one up curiously at Shakespeare and Company during a solo trip to Paris, struck by its provocative promise. I’m so glad I did. As the title suggests, it is a probing, socio-political analysis – one that will challenge you to reconsider assumptions about female desire and consent in the #MeToo era. To view sex as much as a mental state than a purely bodily act, a space where we are, as the writer puts it: “unclothed, injurable, both physically and psychologically”.
5. Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin
Hailed by critics as the queen of literary erotica, Delta of Venus is the best place to start if you’re new to Nin. The groundbreaking collection of 15 short stories from the late French-American writer was published posthumously in the late 1970s, though predominately written in the 1940s for a private collector. It centres self-pleasure and fantasy, illuminating an inner world where female sexuality is shameless and imaginative. Full of possibility.
Emma Firth is a London-based essayist and writer exploring love, intimacy and joy for British Vogue, The Cut, ELLE UK, ES magazine, Rolling Stone, mixed feelings newsletter and more. Alongside this, she is also the host and curator of the new literary salon, Rejection is Romantic
