Turn The Page: Nine & A Half Weeks A Memoir of a Love Affair by Elizabeth McNeill

Do you ever get given a book and wonder what the fuck good is it going to do you to read it? I looked at the cover and I figured they had made it somewhat muted to detract from the lurid rubbish I was going to find inside it. I only knew about the film and as far as artistic merit that is not why anyone watches that movie.

I am glad I set aside my prejudices and picked up this slim volume. I am not really interested in who the author is; that\’s irrelevant to the book. She can really write though, and to say that this was a pleasant surprise is to understate the disparity between my lack of expectations and how drawn in and captivated and compelled to keep reading I was.

I read the book in a night, and I was struck both by how skilfully the portraits of the main characters were drawn, how the perfect amount of information was withheld and delivered, to create a tension in the unusual situation being described.

The book is not served by the film and I hope they are to some degree divorced from each other, because it would be a shame if someone sniffed derisively at this book because of the soft porn movie. This isn\’t a bodice ripping trash-fest … it is a really well written read that gives insight into a female sense of the erotic that is not really given much space anywhere. Check it out and be surprised.