The world of contemporary literature is filled with its own snipes, grievances and discourse, but one thing I am grateful for is that the puritanism that is infecting Hollywood studios has not leaked onto the page. And thanks to Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, literature for the most part now avoids obvious cliches and offers a wide range of erotic perspectives. Sex even features prominently in novels regardless of its narrative importance.
Take Brittany Newell’s second novel, Soft Core, for instance. As Ruthie – also known as the stripper Baby, also known as the dominatrix Miss Sunday – volleys from her home to the club and into the dungeon the kink scenes she details satisfy an anthropological curiosity as well as an erotic one, making for a kinetic read.
Not every sex scene drives the narrative forward but the chaotic life of Ruth and her pseudonyms has an addictive quality as it propels you into the seedy underbelly frequented by sex workers and their customers.
While San Francisco’s underground world is far from innocent, Newell’s vivid prose paints a portrait coated with the synthetic sweetness we equate with sweets, arcades and fairground rides. Especially when it comes to her new rival at the club Emmeline: a dancer so perfect she’ll make you queasy, like eating too many marshmallows. Or at least that’s how Ruthie feels, although her fixation may be distracting her from more concerning truths, especially when her ex-boyfriend Dino goes missing.
It may be Ruthie’s curiosity and desperate need for distraction that keeps her spinning pseudonyms, but the kinks of her clients are of genuine interest to her. Newell uses her experience as a dominatrix to detail these moments, sometimes dangerous, but more often than not simply detailing a brief connection between two lonely souls. While these scenes are uniquely intimate, the reality of sex work is never a fantasy, even with all the smoke-and-mirrors of the club decor. Newell’s depiction of the industry is also meticulously aware of the physical toll of the job; the long hours, the mundane dullness and the intensive beauty maintenance required all ensure that we never fetishise sex work.
Sharing in Ruthie’s exhaustion as she continues to chase down the night, the novel follows her as she searches for Dino, and while tormented by guilt and grief, her work is her only escape. She spends her days just as curious about the edgy kinks that peak her morbid curiosity as the surprisingly mundane moments of intimacy shared with her clients.
