Clarisse Thorn asked me to participate in a Blog Hop in order to introduce new authors to new readers. If you’ve come here from the link posted on Richard’s blog, welcome! If you’re a regular reader of mine or came upon my blog by chance, I’m about to talk about my upcoming projects and then link you to some other writers.
Now for the questions!
What is the working title of your next book?
Jack Hyde makes a ridiculously clumsy pass at Ana, alone in the office. This is not subtle sexual harassment. This is blatant aggression.
Ana kicks him in the groin, runs out of the building and meets Christian and Taylor outside. Christian immediately explodes at her.
“Please don’t be mad at me.” I blink up at him.
“I am so mad at you right now,” he snarls and once more sweeps his hand through his hair. “Get in the car.”
“Christian, please—”“Get in the fucking car, Anastasia, or so help me I’ll put you in there myself,” he threatens, his eyes blazing with fury.
Oh shit. “Don’t do anything stupid, please,” I beg.
“STUPID! ” he explodes. “I told you to use your fucking Blackberry. Don’t talk to me about stupid. Get in the motherfucking car, Anastasia— NOW! ” he snarls and a frisson of fear runs through me. This is Very Angry Christian. I’ve not seen him this mad before. He’s barely holding on to his self-control.
That Christian can explode like this should be a giant red flag to Ana. That he says he is angry at her, not at the situation or the guy who molested her, is an even bigger one.
Christian used to be a Master of the Universe (minus the blond pageboy haircut and fun-fur undies); now he’s regressed to the point at which Ana stepping into another room makes him panic. When she comes back, he flips from fear to arousal in an instant. Things get a bit hinky, and even Ana feels uncomfortable.
I keep thinking I’ve hit bottom with this book series, but it keeps on surprising me.
From Žižek’s “Organs without Bodies – Gilles Deleuze”:
And one finds a similar obscene subtext even where one would not expect it – in some texts which are commonly perceived as feminist. In order to confront this obscene “plague of fantasies” which persists at the level of “subliminal reality” at its most radical, suffice it to (re)read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the distopia about the “Republic of Gilead,” a new state on the East Coast of the US which emerged when the Moral Majority took over. The ambiguity of the novel is radical: its “official” aim is, of course, to present as actually realized the darkest conservative tendencies in order to warn us about the threats of Christian fundamentalism – the evoked vision is expected to give rise to horror in us. However, what strikes the eye is the utter fascination with this imagined universe and its invented rules. Fertile woman are allocated to those privileged members of the new nomenklatura whose wives cannot bear children – forbidden to read, deprived of their names (they are called after the man to whom they belong: the heroine is Offred – “of Fred”), they serve as receptacles of insemination. The more we read the novel, the more it becomes clear that the fantasy we are reading is not that of the Moral Majority, but that of feminist liberalism itself: an exact mirror-image of the fantasies about the sexual degeneration in our megalopolises which haunts members of the Moral Majority. So, what the novel displays is desire – not of the Moral Majority, but the hidden desire of feminist liberalism itself.
So, it’s not just fantasies that reflect reality, but fantasies that reflect each other. Moral Majority types have their dystopian fantasies of women stolen away by dark Others, and fantasize utopias of patriarchal order. Liberal feminists have their dystopian fantasies of the world the Moral Majority would create, a masochistic fantasy of defeat and vindication.
Reading this chapter brought me to a whole new level of hatred and loathing for these characters, and this book.
At long last, Leila shows up with a gun, confronting Ana in her apartment.
As I argued before, Leila functions as Ana’s doppelganger, the reflection of her fears and hatreds. Specifically, she represents Ana’s fear that Christian will abandon her: she keeps saying, “Alone.” Ana assumes that it’s either lifetime monogamy with Christian, or a life of being a crazy cat lady.
Ana doesn’t step out when Elena visits Christian. Instead she sticks around so she can passive-aggressively seethe at Elena. Elena tells Christian that someone is blackmailing her. Does this book really need another subplot?
Christian is acting in a dom-y sort of way, which is fine. The problem is that Ana isn’t really into the Scene.
When he turns and gazes at me, his eyes are burning. I stand paralyzed like a complete zombie, my heart pounding, my blood pumping, not actually able to move a muscle. In my mind, all I can think is— this is for him—the thought repeating like a mantra over and over again.
Doing it “for him” is the problem. Ana is unaware of her own desires, or at least unable to express them. Again, she’s still thinking of this interactions in terms of “if I do what he wants, he will be nice to me”, instead of “what can he and I do that we will both enjoy?” It’s a recipe for slowly building up a reservoir of resentment.
Leila is really slacking off on this whole jealous deranged stalker/champion of class warfare thing. No sign of her in this chapter either, as Ana and the Expander finish their boat ride and have lunch. This makes me want to watch Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct again. Somebody really needs to boil Ana and Christian’s bunny, unless you count Leila trashing Ana’s car.
I should also mention that Ana has not asked Christian anything about Leila. That a former submissive has gone rogue and is stalking a dominant’s current squeeze isn’t necessarily his fault, but it does raise questions.
