With a title such as Eat Me, I had to know if it truly was a sex book. So, I put it to the test. I ran the book through five trials, which consisted of randomly opening the book and checking for smut.

Trial #1, page 189: "He could feel his cock rising once more to the occasion. Down boy, down, he commanded it vainly."

Trial #2, page 110: "He thought, now or never, stood on his mental diving platform, bent at the knees, took a deep breath, and flung himself into the water, closing his eyes as he went. His lips came gently to rest upon hers."

Trial #3, page 53: "Leaning closer to him, I breathed in his pungent male odor, all sweat and motor oil. My heart was beating."

Trial #4, page 70: "She places her mouth on the inside of her slave's thigh and pulls long and hard on the creamy skin. Pinching it between her teeth, she draws blood to just below the surface where it remains in the form of a love bite. The slave moans."

Trial #5, page 5: "He shook his head, but his short thick hair only excited her as it brushed back and forth against her sensitive and swollen sex."

It's a tough call, but it looks like smut to me.

And indeed it was. Eat Me by Linda Jaivin is the tale of four Australian women who come from all walks of life and who all like to get some. As fate would have it, one of them is an erotica writer. The majority of the book is her take on her friends' sex lives, with the truth spewing out at the end.

It was highly entertaining, though I'm afraid in the wrong way. The thing that gets me about erotica such as this book is its intent. Readers are supposed to think these women's sexual experiences are enticing. The absurdity of their daily lives is supposed to transfer me to this alternate universe where my sexuality overwhelms me in such a way that I might actually give in to the alluring cries of the freshly misted produce at the grocery store. The words attempt to disguise my cynicism toward passing dark strangers with the stranger's swelling and throbbing need for my sweetness.

Me, I only go to the store every two weeks to hear the misting system's warning sound of recorded thunder, and that typically keeps me more entertained than the produce. Besides, I am really not very sweet.

Well, you argue, it's all fantasy. For me, the allure of fantasy is the possibility that it could happen. I don't think anyone will be meeting any snake-charming Chinese men in the dead of winter at the Old Summer Palace, let alone having this said man bend us over in a barren forest above a hedge maze full of school children and charm us with his snake. I guess I just like my sordid tales tempered in reality.

I have to respect Jaivin for her great imagination. If you are going to write such a book, you need the kind of unending creative stamina she has for the telling details. Her characters were a bit stereotypical, but a fair slice of womanhood nonetheless. She had the dowdy intellectual, the fashion princess, the easy one and the mysterious one. Together they represent common insecurities that hinder women in relationships, such as appearance, intimacy, abandonment and attachment. However, she is still able to get them all laid. I was worried for the intellectual, but she was able to get it on with one of her younger virginal students. Go girl!

Jaivin went on to dazzle me thoroughly throughout with the ability of these women to stick things in their hoo-hoos. The cleverness abounds. I think the discovery of a baby octopus was the brightest. However varying shapes of fruit seem to be the most popular. It gives the grape a whole new purpose.

So, the title is a nice suggestion--but overall, it gives a nice hard blow.