This is a very unusual collection of vignettes relating to a certain part of the female anatomy. Each 1-2 page story describes, in quite explicit nature, various aspects of a particular woman’s nethers. It sounds like smut, but it is something other than that, really. The author, J.M. de Prada, a Spaniard, has quite the dirty mind, bordering on deranged in some stories. He is said to have been inspired by another Spanish masterwork, Senos, by Spanish escritor Ramón Gómez de la Serna in 1917. I was struck by the thought that after these to works the field is open for a third Spanish writer to put together an ode to the female backside – but about halfway through the stories, the narrator mentions he has already begun writing it.
The average story goes something like this – i) women of a certain job have something particular about their organs (e.g. seamstresses), then ii) some chauvinist musing over these particularities, reference to the narrator’s own sexual prowess, and then iii) the final sentence – often involving a put-down. This attitude annoyed me, and in my mind I conjured up a counter-volume, written by a woman, making fun of men and their anatomies. That idea has probably been tried, but I’m not especially keen on finding out, so I’ll leave it at that. Sometimes it feels like the author is just out to shock the reader, with references to various perversions, and a lot of the stories involve exotifying perspectives – which feels a bit off, considering contemporary notions of upstanding moral conduct. Nonetheless, he has a writerly talent, this Juan Manuel de Prada. I just don’t know if I care enough to seek out one of his real books.
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Kinship of all Species 