My Secret Life
1966
- classic literature
- fiction
- erotic literature
- sex customs
- english erotic literature
- sex
- pornography
- sex addiction
- fiction, erotica, general
- sex addicts
The story
A rare look at the hidden side of Victorian lifeFrom his precocious childhood to the end of what he calls his "amatory career," an adventurous Victorian known only as "Walter" records a breathtaking carnal epic through hundreds of sexual encounters during an era of notorious repression.
What it’s like
Dense, unhurried first-person prose in a flat, confessional, almost ledger-like voice, the sort that narrates rooms, clothing, weather and meals with the same matter-of-fact attention it gives to its sexual encounters, so the page feels like a gaslit Victorian bedroom diary left open on a desk. Its sensory world is heavy with upholstery, lamplight, rain on cobbled London streets, and the rustle of petticoats, rendered in long, rambling sentences that loop back on themselves and digress into asides about class, money and social hypocrisy. The vibe is candid, obsessive and slightly melancholy, best suited to a slow reading session with a cup of tea on a grey afternoon or a long stretch alone when a reader wants something frank and historically textured rather than fast. Pacing is episodic and repetitive by design, one encounter after another, with the narrator's self-regard and occasional wistfulness giving the book its only real arc. Its intensity is high and explicit throughout: sexual content is graphic and constant, with no violence or gore, and the register is frank rather than romantic. It is for readers curious about Victorian sexual culture and erotic literature who want an unvarnished, very long, very explicit document rather than gentle fiction.
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