Title: The Carnal Crimes of Cremorne Author: Anonymous Publisher: Blue Moon Books Publish Date: 1998, 2005 Pages: 215 Genres:: Literature,Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

Rating:

The Revolutionary War is long over, but the British are still coming.

During the dawn of earliest 20 th century England, while sexually repressive attitudes unsuccessfully attempted to squelch the desires of the working classes and demonize sex, the rich and privileged indulged wildly in the pleasures of the flesh. Underground erotica, also known as horn books, was highly popular and women numbered among the authors.

In the title, “Cremorne” refers to the real-life Cremorne Gardens built along the Thames River in London in the mid 1800’s with another site of the same name in Melbourne, Australia. It was well known as a hotbed of fornication, a red-light district for the blue-blooded.

The lusty, vivacious heroine, Caroline Redfield, is a bright, palpable and affectionate presence you can almost feel next to you even as you read her words, initially penned in her diary, where she freely reveals the real names and identities of those around her without fear of reprisal (the Cremorne was an insider publication never meant to be circulated beyond members of the exclusive club, and during King Edward’s reign, the British press was discreet).

In between her affable, frenzied lesbian orgies with her girlfriends Lizzie and Vanessa and couplings with other men from every station in life, she and her lover gallery owner Paul Copplestone stumble upon and solve the mystery of a forged painting that is seemingly in two places at once.

Sexual encounters are sexual encounters but in this book, the rich descriptions of the lifestyle associated with the time period add greatly to the pull-you-in factor. Caroline and her friends and lovers hardly saw sex as a chore to be gotten over with when they chose to lie back and think of England. Taking liberties with the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s song “Time,” hanging on in quiet desperation was not the way of the British aristocracy unless it was just a short wait to savor a lover’s body.

One of the book’s great charms is the scrupulously polite language the men and women used while tangled up like barnyard animals rapaciously copulating. An example: “Eliza, may I have the pleasure of fucking you from behind?” “Certainly you may, Gerard, although please do not attempt to go up my bum.” During one tryst, rather than run through baseball stats, a noble-born stud relies on the technique of counting all of England’s kings to delay his climax.

More interesting still was to read that despite the patriarchal government of the time, there were husbands who permitted their wives the same extramarital affairs they enjoyed (even if they themselves could not perform as one episode illustrates) and often stood in as spectators/participants.

These tales of earthy, meticulously documented and funny lust, so playfully and warmly told, and set against the backdrop of a vanished era, while a love story hums in the background, are a pleasure to drink in.