Great cover, but what is it?

I’m beginning to wonder if Florence Stonebreaker’s books are all about the covers and the cover copy. They’re not erotica; sex, when it happens, seems to be rough and joyless, more about the power relationship between the two participants than about pleasure. There’s an attention to psychology in each book, a lack of humor, and a grittiness that leads me to think these two books are neither romance nor erotica. They’re chick noir.

In Nurses Wild, for example, Nurse Velma’s having an affair with a married doc, Dr. Gregg; meanwhile, she has to deal with the unwanted attentions of Dr. Loerb while trying to avoid her estranged husband, Kenny. Velma separated from Kenny because he took all her money and cheated on her. But as a flashback in Chapter 2 relates, she just can’t get rid of the bastard. He barges his way into her place in order to drink her booze, take her money, and take her body, too.

In the end she simply lay quietly and accepted him, knowing what his frenzy was all about. This was not love and in a sense, not even passion. This was the anger of a rejected, frustrated weakling of a man, trying to gain some small feeling of triumph by the subjection and penetration of her body.

Pop psychology, perhaps, but it was more than I expected; and it gets better a few minutes later, when Kenney gets his second wind. (Kind of amazing, in my opinion, given how much he’s boozing it up.)

“You’ve had your pound of flesh and more,” she told him. “Hit the road.”

“What I had was a joke. Listen, lady. I don’t want to be despised. Before I leave this house I want to be treated — just once — like a husband. After that you can go to your floozie’s hell with your doctor boy friend.”

Aghast, she realized that he had sensed and been affronted by her passivity when he possessed her. She would not be rid of him until she had given him back the illusion of an ego.

That’s what amazed me: not just the marital rape, but this second subjugation, where to avoid his abuse she has to forget her hatred for the man and conjure her earlier feelings, the feelings she had for him when they were young.

I haven’t finished either book, but I’ve skipped around quite a bit. Stonebreaker has a problem with narrative drive. I can’t seem to develop much concern for Velma, for example, perhaps because she’s such a victim — and the suspense of “let’s see if Velma grows a spine or not” really doesn’t grip me.

Kitty, the Wild French Nurse, might be a more compelling character. You have to give kudos to a nurse who, in the first few pages, expresses her contempt for her patients and her wish they would die:

These loathsome old men, calling her baby, cutie, or just hey, you pretty one — they ought to be thinking about their funeral expenses, not ogling the breasts and backside of a good-looking nurse. These horrid lumps of lewd flesh who assumed that the good-looking nurse was on call to serve every single need of theirs. Every need.

At times Kitty could tolerate them, finding them more amusing than annoying. But there were other times when she wished they would all die like sick dogs. This was one of those times.

Yeah, maybe I ought to set Velma aside and spend my time with Kitty. Venom over victim.

D.

PS: For those of you who aren’t tired of my Hillary-bashing ways, here’s a rec for Young Hillary Clinton.

Walnut, June 2, 2008. Category: Books 'n' Authors.

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