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Unmastered: A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell (2012)

by Katherine Angel(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1846146674 (ISBN13: 9781846146671)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Allen Lane

review 1: Remarkable. It is best when it is lyrical, impressionistic, gnomic, and wise about the contradictions pulling it apart. Desire is no easy thing to dissect without killing it, so it suits me to have a rich flavor of it and some canny regard for the levels of complexity that make it such an entangled subject. Just past half way, things move in more academic directions and the prose runs longer, with fewer of those pregnant pauses littering the front half. Finally we move into painful territory and the depression that suppressed desire without fully killing it.I would love for a wise reader to point me at other titles that do what this does as well or better, but I would also relish knowing that this is a singular work, because love should be singular and not just serendi... morepity.
review 2: This is an interesting book. I started it not quite sure what it was - poetry, prose, short stories, non-fiction - and I suppose it is all of those things.Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell is just that - a book about desire. Told by Katherine Angel and informed by her own experiences and knowledge. I found myself folding over the bottom corners - something I do when there's something to go back to, there's plenty of that.The book is broken into sections with semi-cryptic names such as 'To Spend Oneself, To Gamble Oneself' and 'More Gone' and, in these, she covers a range of topics - including her own desire, communication, pornography and abortion. I'll be honest the abortion chapter threw me a bit, it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book, but it was clearly something so personal to the author and so tied in with her ideas of desire that she felt it relevant to include it.As the book is personal it's very heteronormative - mentioning lesbians once (in the section about pornography) and brushing over gay men and bisexuality entirely however because this isn't an academic book I found that okay/acceptable though lacking.The book isn't trying to offer answers, it does ask some questions, and it brings some up, especially in terms of male-female relationships - for example in her chapter on communication Angel writes:"I am proof of your masculinity, of your endless potency.I must reassure you. This is what I must do."Other passages aren't trying to ask you anything - they just are. They're about her desire, the way she feels when she is desired, how she feels when she comes.The style of writing is quick to read - it's almost a stream of consciousness- and whilst I doubt I'll read the whole thing again there are definitely passages I'll return to. less

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