I’ll Do Anything You Want by Iolanda Batalle
Catalan fiction
Original title – Faré tot el que tu vulguis
Translators- Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent
Source – Review copy
I was so pleased I was able to get a copy of this sent by 3 times rebel press as I had been a huge fan of the first two books the I had read last year they are a small publisher that has decided to publish working-class female voices from around the world in minority languages. This tie it is from the Catalan writer Iolanda Batallé. She is a teacher and writer. But she has also set up a number of publishing Imprints and raised international awareness in Cultural projects in her country. She also runs a bookshop called Ona in her Home town(one for the bookshop bucket list ) an emblematic bookshop a house of culture and a house of literature(sounds simply wonderful) . She has written four books.
THE COST OF LIVING KEEPS RISING, AND YET HUMANKIND HAS recently gone down in value. Nora strode along the jetway without looking back. She knew he was watching. His gaze held a deep nostalgia, a feeling so tangible, so solid she could almost knead it, the way she did when she had baked with her grandmother. Nacho watched her, her black skirt just above the knee, her blazer, her swaying hips. He noted with amusement that the men desired her and even the women were looking at her. He’d always wanted to know what had happened to his mother, but he’d never found a single clue.
His mother had turned blue after being with a man who was not his father. Dead. He’d witnessed it by chance, he was supposed to be at school. Mother’s turned blue! There’s nothing that can be done. That’s when he decided to become a shark. Seven years later he heard the song king of painter the first time.
I loved the clever use of this song as she has the affair and sees her sexual awakening in an S&M world
This book follows one’s sexual awakening Journey we meet Nora she is a housewife bored of her life in many ways. So when she starts an affair that then leads her into a world of High-class prostitution. Her world starts to come alive as she dives into a world of S&M . But in Nora’s head this is almost a dream-like feeling for her but as we the reader are an avatar on her journey we maybe see the slim lines of darkness and the danger as she drifts further into this world. As she as a woman is sexually awakened to the new level of desire these meets bring to her body, we see how she and her husband drifted apart over the 25 years of their marriage. This is a woman’s journey into her own body and what lust and sex can awaken in a woman. But there is always a feeling of what might happen in the background of her thought the sexual looking-glass journey. As we follow a sexual Alice as she eats and licks things and other things that make her body and desire grow!
SOMETIMES SHE FELT LIKE SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE SHE WAS.She wondered if it was all really happening. But there was no evidence to indicate it wasn’t. She’d avoided phoning Júlia for days, because when she did everything became all too real. Júlia had told her to break it off, she’d said it wasn’t right … that wasn’t what she’d meant when she spoke of infidelity. Ah, so now, to top things off, I need to be unfaithful the way you want me to be! Nora had yelled before hanging up on her. She needed to tell someone about what she was going through, but there was no one. The people who would have listened without judging were dead, and Robert obviously wasn’t an option. Teresa, her therapist, had passed away.
The dream like feeling of her journey is described her
This is a wonderfully poetic book that sees our narrator on her journey. The nod to Alice is mentioned on the cover and there is a feeling of someone dreaming through a world that isn’t dreamlike and that yes is giving her a lot of power in herself and her own desire but then on there other hand is dangerous like putting a hand through a flame you’re going get burnt eventually. This reminds me of the rabbit holes you went down in books William S Burroughs wrote about sexual awakening his were around sex and drugs but this is driven by a woman who wants to break free of her boring world and feels that is something Burroughs also did well they want to break free and feel something else!! Or Anais Noin those first waves of writers that tackled what are taboo subjects in their books. This has led to writers like Iolanda that can now enter a sexual world of high-class sex for money a woman that is navigating that world as a woman empowered for now.!! The over thing I loved was the use of music in this book it used piece of music as a sort of tag for the sexual events as a way of remember the nights of passion. This is another gem from a press that is publishing hard-hitting books.
Have you a favourite book that deals with sexual desires?