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Mar. 6th, 2019 11:57 pmI forget who on my dwlist mentioned Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, but I was intrigued by the premise: a British-Indian twentysomething seeking Fulfilling Employment signs up to teach what she thinks will be a creative writing class and what her middle-aged-to-elderly Punjabi immigrant students think will be an ESL class, which through a series of coincidences eventually morphs into an enthusiastic weekly porn-writing group.
And indeed this premise is charming, and the developing relationships between Our Very Young Very Feminist Heroine and her various students with very different experiences are interestingly drawn, and the widows' newfound enthusiasm for crafting smutty fanfiction is adorable! I did not expect there to also be a murder plot, a romance plot, and a coming-to-terms-with-your-sister's-different-life-choices plot but all these things are also happening. There is quite a lot of plot in this book, all of which somehow gets resolved through the transformative power of porn and Women Being Empowered To Ask For What They Want Out Of Sex And Relationships. Yes, even the murder plot.
There is a certain kind of literary fiction about the Transformative Power of Literature -- I just saw the Netflix Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society film so I'm thinking of that as a prime example, but it's a whole subgenre -- that often walks a fine line between being genuinely heartwarming and being a bit self-congratulatory, and Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows does indeed also walk that line and YMMV on where it falls. I will not say my heart was not warmed but I did also sometimes find myself squinting at the book going, "really, every problem was resolved by the Transformative Power of Smut? Like, every one?" EVERY ONE.
And indeed this premise is charming, and the developing relationships between Our Very Young Very Feminist Heroine and her various students with very different experiences are interestingly drawn, and the widows' newfound enthusiasm for crafting smutty fanfiction is adorable! I did not expect there to also be a murder plot, a romance plot, and a coming-to-terms-with-your-sister's-different-life-choices plot but all these things are also happening. There is quite a lot of plot in this book, all of which somehow gets resolved through the transformative power of porn and Women Being Empowered To Ask For What They Want Out Of Sex And Relationships. Yes, even the murder plot.
There is a certain kind of literary fiction about the Transformative Power of Literature -- I just saw the Netflix Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society film so I'm thinking of that as a prime example, but it's a whole subgenre -- that often walks a fine line between being genuinely heartwarming and being a bit self-congratulatory, and Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows does indeed also walk that line and YMMV on where it falls. I will not say my heart was not warmed but I did also sometimes find myself squinting at the book going, "really, every problem was resolved by the Transformative Power of Smut? Like, every one?" EVERY ONE.
