Oysters Among Us

Rating:
Summary: "Oysters Among Us" - Filled With The Zest & Spice Of Life!
Review: Author Susannah Indigo has written much more than an erotic novel with "Oysters Among Us" - although it will certainly awaken sleeping libidos! It disturbs me no end that this book is defined and marketed as "erotica" and limited, as such, to a smaller reading audience. While there is nothing wrong with erotica, per se, there is so much more than sex with a superficial plot in "Oysters." And the narrative is composed of just plain good writing...magical prose! Pleasure here is not limited to flesh alone.

Set at the beginning of this millennium, the novel consists of thirteen interlocking stories about a group of characters who are either family, friends, lovers, and the children of the above. Most live in Boulder, Colorado. A few live in San Francisco and travel to Boulder, or visa versa, to be with their loved ones. Together they explore their lives, loves, fantasies, dreams, (one of the characters is a psychotherapist), their potential for joy, and the limits of desire. These people just shimmer with life and together they celebrate the human identity. "The most important sin I observe every day," says Madelaine, "is the failure to imagine and live out your very own life as it was meant to be." Pain and regret often accompany delight and pleasure, and Ms. Indigo explores the darker side of the human experience also.

Graceful, quirky, poignant, funny, very sensual, at times perverse, the stories just flow. Their very structure is fluid, and they will catch the reader up from page one. The characters are wonderful, unique/unusual, and well developed. They all interact throughout the book, no matter who is primary in the particular tale or chapter.

Some of the people you'll meet through the "Oysters Among Us" narrative are:

China Sunflower Thomas - 26, a sensual redhead in love with Jack and learning to "fly." She is known for cooking with foods considered to be aphrodisiacs throughout history. Her menu for a "Better Than Sex Party" is saffron fettuccine with fresh lavender, white asparagus and crab meat salad, oysters Casino, a sauce of truffles, chocolate rum trifle, and more.

Jack Iverson - professional photographer, lover of China...with a perpetual wandering eye, who gets punished for his Don Juan behavior and loves every minute of it.

Annie Braverman: 36, naturopath, mother, wannabe courtesan. She oozes eroticism, loves Sam, own many editions of the Kama Sutra, in multiple languages and plans to memorize them all. "People often think the Kama Sutra is just about sexual positions, but it encompasses all the sensory pleasures of daily life - good food, silken clothes, perfumes, music, paintings, gardens. Somebody should revise it for the 21st century - how to make each day voluptuous from start to finish. Of course, we'd have to update instructions like Art #48 - decorating chariots with flowers."

Sam - a handsome, middle-aged, Jewish, man who resides & works in San Francisco but really lives in Boulder where he loves Annie. "Sam changed a little at the Tantra class, all of us did. We agreed we should eat more oysters and more chocolate, pour kindness down like honey, find sex in our laughter and laughter in our sex."

Nobeko, almost 40, a masseuse, beautiful in mind, body and spirit, is extremely unhappy in her marriage. She begins to mysteriously find rare coins and has no idea as to whom they previously belonged or where they come from.

There's also a woman who dances with snakes, a grandfather who reflects on the former lovers in his life and writes "The Book of Love," masquerade balls with most unusual costumes...and so much more. I loved this novel and its characters! Highly recommended.
JANA


Rating:
Summary: Sexy & smart, excellent writing
Review: I didn't fall instantly in love with this book -- the effect is more subtle than that, I think. But I felt compelled to read it twice, in quick succession, and I was more entranced by the second read than the first. I can't remember the last time that happened.

_Oysters Among Us_ constructs a sort of story circle. It's as though I am sitting on a bench a short ways back, listening to stories told around a fire as darkness slowly falls and the fire casts increasingly more interesting shadows. At first the stories are jarring, in a way, because the first depends on the last, depends on the middle, depends on the third, and each story is richer for having read the others, as the tales of friends will be. But with each tale I find myself, quite unconsciously, leaning in closer to the fire.

The book is unflinchingly erotic, often explicitly so, but what makes it memorable is the basic humanity of the characters, the dream-like interconnections of the stories, and the feeling of growth and hope that pervades it. The book would still be a tale well told without the sex, and that's a rare thing for erotic stories.

We meet China and Jack -- the dominating sexual force in China's life, who is in turn dominated by Madelaine, but only as a favor to Annie Braverman, who's in love with Sam, the ex-boyfriend of bluenote, who dances with snakes with Annie, who walks naked through the mall with Nita and Nobeka, who has a life changing encounter with Erick, whose cousin Ruby thinks he spends to much time in Internet blue rooms, but loves her life partner Nita, who teaches a Zen class to Annie and Sam -- but you see my point. That level of effortless, intertwined storytelling rarely graces erotica.

_Oysters_ has another quality, more difficult to define, that I found simply wonderful. The characters are altogether realistically drawn, with all of the heartache, misunderstanding, and even outright trauma seen in other lives, but there's an atmosphere of coping, even of joyfully moving on, that moves through nearly all of the stories. I don't mean that the stories resolve to saccharine Hollywood endings, just that the characters learn from tragedy and setback rather than wallowing in it. Even the story about bluenote, a character so traumatized by depression that she's become mute, ends with the phrase, "It's never too late for another simple twist of fate." In general, the characters fit my favorite phrase from Susannah's prior chapbook, _Going Mad from Roses_, mostly being "commonly confused and slouching toward grace."

In the end -- even if that end is two times through for some of us -- _Oysters_ succeeds at about every level. That makes it an easy book to recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Fast and fun, a great read
Review: Susannah Indigo has a powerful fictional voice, and this book highlights it at its best. Her dream sequences can compete with anything the movies have ever shown us, and her characters are completely believable, even when they're secretly rich or have strange coins appearing before them out of nowhere. You don't read many erotica books that include Thoreau's "to do" list, or a brilliant lesbian therapist decorating the equator with Barbie dolls, or a grandfather confessing to his lifetime of affairs. I've been happily following Indigo's bright and often funny writing on-line and in antholgies for a few years now, and am glad to see her work finally appear in this form. It's the best erotic book of the year.

Rating:
Summary: Sexy & smart, excellent writing
Review: This is a gorgeous, unique book, full of sex scenes and real people, friendship and dreams, sort of a Sex & the City but with real types of people. Highly recommended

Rating:
Summary: Sexy and fun!
Review: This is a very entertaining book! It's very different from other erotica books. It's more like a real novel about real people, except that theres lots of great sex in it! My favorite story was 'Blue Rooms' about the couple who meet on-line and then she hides in the closet. I wished this book never ended and want to read more!!

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous writing
Review: This is one of those books that writers like me crave - the kind of book where you're marking pages and phrases, and getting inspiration and ideas all the time. I don't write erotica, but if I did, this is what I'd want to write. Sexy, spare, meaningful, humorous, and with a flow that makes you want to re-read it as soon as you're finished.