Los cien golpes (100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed) Book

Surely this has been misclassified as erotica--yes, there is a lot of sex, but it isn't erotic by any means. If anything, it's depressing. Think Go Ask Alice, only with nocuous sexual encounters being the object lesson instead of irresponsible experimental drug use--only much, much worse.

(I should have known from the title...)

Wracked with self-doubt after a disappointing first encounter with love, the author admittedly attempts to muffle her feelings of loneliness and inadequacy through deliberate self-exploitation. Although she is sincerely fascinated by her new-found seductive powers, she clearly does not feel liberated in acting upon them. She persistently seeks out precarious rendezvous with highly questionable men in a predictable cycle of self-punishment. Deriving little to no pleasure from these encounters, (except perhaps her slight satisfaction in exposing other's perversions) the tone of the book is regretful if anything--not by any means liberated or erogenous.

Occasionally, Melissa will lapse into her mirror-world where she is so taken with her own beauty and sensuality; her inherent ability to be desired, that the despair she feels melts away, and for a moment the reader is convinced that she may actually be enjoying herself. However, that illusion is always quickly shattered when the camera pans back out and we see her again as an ashamed, distraught and misunderstood would-be heroine.
As Melissa becomes less and less recognizable to her former self, her exploits hasten and become increasingly risky in a blurred attempt to reincarnate her prior self (the girl in the mirror), and if not, to at least chastise it for disappearing. She spends the entire book frantically struggling to regain ownership of her sexuality. Unable to achieve this on her own, she repeats this sequence of sexual extremes and shame until her knight in shining armor finally comes to rescue her from herself.

As if her sexual misadventures weren't bad enough, the language she uses to describe them is even worse. She routinely uses ridiculously androcentric, terribly unattractive and cliche metaphors to describe her encounters:
"He positioned me on top of him like a defenseless doll and aimed his long lance into my sex…"
Yikes.
She also habitually refers to her vagina as "The Secret," and well, enough said.

Neither an erotic tale nor a feminist coming of age piece, 100 Strokes serves more as an exposé on the incidence of child predators in Sicily (and everywhere else, unfortunately) than anything.
Barf.

Overall, a depressing, cheesy and cliché book of a little girl lost. Like Snow White meets Reviving Ophelia as told by a cautionary Lolita--laden with shame, BDSM undertones, and creepy, creepy men.

Then again, it is considered one of the most scandalous and wildly controversial novels to come out of Europe in recent years…

Creepster hogwash... 50 shades going on 100 brush strokes of uncomfortable young adults being either very promiscuous or very liberated or very enlightened or simply disoriented, underline the one you like most, scratch out the rest.

Uh, not to slut-shame anyone or anything but this can't have been a way of healthy development or exploration or whatever. Or else?

Anyway, as an exploration of deep uncomfortableness, insecurities and everything, this is a one-off. A star for that. Another star for experimentation narrative.

Note to self: The Spanish version has the nicest description:
A los dieciséis años se tienen pocas cosas: un cuerpo que provoca perplejidades, un espejo; un diario... Y muchas ganas de experi­mentar el amor con la nostalgia de lo nunca probado. Los cien golpes es el relato estremecedor de una iniciación erótica en las profundidades de la sexofóbica Sicilia. Con precisión de entomólogo, Melissa P. describe sus encuentros sexuales, que empiezan con la acostumbrada decepción frente al gallito mediterráneo y terminan en orgías con desconocidos, experiencias lésbicas y relaciones peligrosas. Frente a sus padres sigue siendo la princesita que se cepilla el pelo cien veces antes de irse a dormir. Para sí misma, es la mujer que ningún hombre será capaz de descubrir.