Welcome to Litsy!

Sometimes you start a book in 2018 and you finish it in 2022. An unusual story about a married woman who starts an affair with a woman she meets at the local pool. Rather charged and more erotic than the cover would suggest.

To be honest, this is not a genre I typically read, but after reading a glowing endorsement by Ami McKay (The Birth House, The Virgin Cure, and The Witches of New York), I decided to give it a chance. Connelly's writing is really good—she captures the psyche of a middle-aged mother/wife/woman so well against a really cool setting (Toronto).

Erotic. Truthful. Clever. Connelly begs the question: does anyone really have it all?

Hardly any books feature bisexual protagonists and this one has two. One is a woman married to a man, who hasn't been in a relationship with a woman for some time. The other is a sex worker training to be a sex therapist. The two women meet at a pool in Toronto. Very sex positive, interesting ending that seems to let the reader decide what happens, which I like. There is a lot of sex in this book, in case that isn't obvious. #alaskacanada2018

Quickly skim re-reading this book for my queer book club meeting this morning. I wish I didn't forget book details so quickly! #queerbooks

I read this book for my queer book club. It deals with infidelity, sex and sex-work positivity, questions around polyamory and middle-age/middle-class urban life with lots of detailed, erotic sex scenes. It was a fun book to read on a beach with a mojito in hand! #queerbooks

If you're looking for sex-positive fiction with descriptive bedroom scenes, this is it, featuring an Amazon Shahrazad in modern Toronto who believes in "sex as play for adults; delightful, zany, surprising. Sex as pure unadulterated joy." Marriage, parenthood & adultery, throwing in-laws & job satisfaction into the mix. #canlit #bisexual #LGBTQ

"a bowl of pomegranate seeds that Shar had firked out of their honeycombed husk with the dexterity of a monkey."

Firk: to move quickly; hasten; jerk; twitch; fidget; fuss; conquer. (Merriam Webster online)

This woman expects me to drop everything, just like that, & rush out to see her? She threw the phone back into her bag & returned to the sink. She wasn't going to leave those last pots; she was going to CLEAN them. Fucking things. Those burnt-on potatoes; that lamb grease. Cleaning was domination. A brief unsatisfying domination. They should make deposed dictators do it: life sentences of washing floors, toilets, the constant dirt of human life.

Light fell in a band here, refracted in rippling white and rainbow lines over the blue-green bottom, through the water itself. The sun illuminated the air bubbles, minuscule, shining globes; it was like swimming through glitter.

These epigraphs portend good things ahead in Connelly's latest novel. @shawnmooney - Barbara Pym made me think of you.

This truly is a "juicy peach of a novel," a beautifully written novel of literary fiction with graphic, lovingly depicted sex (between women & between men and women) with a lot of attention to the emotional aspects and just pleasure for pleasure's sake. It's also a slice of middle class Toronto mid-life focused on relationships and character. Titillating and thought-provoking. Reminded me a lot of Zoey Leigh Peterson's novel Next Year For Sure.

Reading this novel's first sex scene, thinking about what we consider "literary" & "realist" & why that doesn't include in-depth descriptions of sex. Why and how did it become convention to fade to black or only mention briefly sex in fiction where so many other aspects of life are described in minute detail? Why is fiction either erotica, with explicit descriptions of sex and little else, or not, with no details of sex as if it's not important?

What the...?!?

My novel just ended and it was completely unexpected!

This book was more light-hearted and erotic than I anticipated. I loved the frank exploration of sexuality and the questioning of sexual norms and relationships. A swift, pleasurable read.

Connelly's poetry is some of my favourite so I'm eager to experience her in the long-form of a novel. #currentlyreading

20 mins left of the day and I am sneaking into today's #Riotgrams post. It's a #Freebie, so I get to talk about whatever I want. Behold, all of the free review queer books I have accumulated over the past year or so from publishers that I still need to read and review. And I've been making an effort to cull the list the past six months. 12 books is not so bad, right? Or is this excessive? I dunno I have no perspective anymore. #QueerBooks

What a great week for #BookMail! Another day, another queer Canadian book. #QueerBooks