32 stories of women’s first times
with other women. The authors describe their
experiences at ages ranging from high school to their fifties. The entries are mostly around eight pages
long, and they do a little more stage-setting than one finds in most erotica. Some tell of charged relationships that
built up over periods of several years, while others describe much more sudden
flirtations and consummations. The
stories are for the most part well written even if the authors show some
fondness for cliché. But they are clearly written as with the aim to arouse the
reader, and the writing is explicit yet relatively tasteful. These accounts are believable enough –
certainly more so than accounts one might find in books like Letters
to Penthouse. Yet they also
seem to take a rather rosy view of these first experiences, portraying them not
only as wonderful expressions of love and affection but also as sexually
transformative epiphanies. Maybe
women’s first experiences with women tend to be better than their first
experiences with men, but surely it sometimes happens that women have
difficult, embarrassing or troubling first experiences with other women. So this collection is better classed as
lesbian erotica than memoir.

© 2003 Christian Perring. All rights reserved.