Too long to be a short story and too short to be a novel, some might say that The Voynich Affair by Linnet Moss suffers from both problematic elongation and improper positioning.
But given that Google (until today) yielded precisely zero hits for the phrase “Voynich erotica”, Moss is clearly reaming out a niche untouched by few (if any) previous hands.
Voynich Erotica
But has she hit the spot?
I must confess that I found reading “The Voynich Affair” on a Kindle on the bus towards Staines in the morning rush hour more than a bit unsettling. Coming to the genre for the first time (so to speak), what I found oddest was that it seems to be written by people scared to death of physical intimacy, and aimed at readers who are also scared to death of physical intimacy. No, really.
I don’t know, it’s like it was typed by someone wearing gloves: chic, distantly-perfumed Italian leather gloves, sure, but gloves nonetheless. And for all the shudderingly implausible physical encounters described in the text, the whole endeavour came across as being locked within a resolutely lonely world, sans any flicker of Sartrean authenticity.
As a result, I can’t claim to have liked (or even mildly empathised with) any of the protagonists: but given that there are plenty of Internationally Acclaimed Bestsellers which failed that same test even more dramatically (Digital Fortress, anyone? *sigh*), that hardly amounts to a serious criticism. And anyway, that’s probably not the point of erotica, right?
At this point, a traditional review would tell you about how the story is based around extra missing pages of the manuscript in a French chateau, and involves various broodingly mysterious (and sociopathic) Voynich researchers: but frankly that’s a bit pointless. By now, you’ve almost certainly decided whether or not you’re interested, so all I can usefully add is that all fifteen chapters are freely available online, starting here.
The Selfish Reason
At this point, I have to ‘fess up to the real reason I bought a copy of The Voynich Affair (which Linnet Moss published as part of “The Mind-Body Problem: Stories of Desire and Love in Academe” (2012), complete with Voynich page on the (virtual) front cover)…
…which is that I wanted to see if the various Voynich researchers in the story were loosely based on any real-world Voynich researchers.
OK, OK: I wanted to see if I had been parodied. Not that I can’t take a joke, it’s just that I’d rather know about the joke than find out about it a decade later. 🙂
Happily, though, I can exclusively reveal that no Voynich researcher seems to have been openly parodied (no Randy Zenbergen, no Donna Via-Odeon, and no sign of the infamous Len Pickling), nor were any Voynichians’ sexual proclivities (errrm, to the best of my knowledge) turned into sort-of-page-turning Voynich-themed erotic encounters.
Unless you know better, that is? 😉
But… Who Would Write Such A Thing?
Author Linnet Moss claims to be:
“a college professor who writes fiction in her spare time. She adores old books, new books, cats, frogs, miniature books, wine, Trappist ales, tea from Ceylon, vegetarian gourmet food, London, Rome, Art Deco skyscrapers, and beautiful men.”
Of course, while some (or indeed all) of this may be true, it remains just as possible that Moss is a short balding non-professor bloke from Deptford with OCD, conceptually not too far removed from “paradee man woman” Wor Cheryl, pet.
As a result, I can (just about) see how some readers might possibly see decrypting the author’s identity, age, and/or indeed gender from the text as a worthwhile challenge.
For me, though, I’m sticking with the Voynich Manuscript: that has more than enough strangely inscrutable nymphs to worry about for one lifetime. 😉
Dear Nick,
Thank you for the review. I am sorry that you did not find the book more erotically satisfying, although perhaps that is just as well if you were reading it on the bus. I wrote it to please female readers, but first and foremost to please myself. That is proof enough of its “Sartrean authenticity.” As to the length: like the VM, it is as long as it needs to be. Remember, it’s not the length that counts, but how skillfully you deploy it.
I shall take it as a compliment that my gender might, even in jest, be the subject of speculation.
Finally I thank you for the perfumed Italian leather gloves. They’ll do very nicely in my next story.
Happy Voyniching and best regards,
Linnet
Randy Zenbergen hahaha. This review is the best thing I read all week. But you forget Ben Phatsex.
Someone should totally start writing Voynich researchers based fiction. Better not erotic, I know what some of them look like.
More like a thriller where people start disappearing and the most unlikely team of researchers has to overcome their differences and solve the Voynich together.
Linnet Moss: thanks very much for dropping by! Even though “The Voynich Affair” plainly wasn’t my bag, dipping my toes in its waters was certainly an… interesting side to Voynich research I hadn’t previously considered. 🙂
Oh, and the distantly-perfumed Italian leather gloves would be from a certain shop in Rome, about 200 metres from the Trevi Fountain: and you’d have to buy two pairs, it would feel insulting and wrong to walk out having bought just a single pair. Just so you know how it works! 😉
🙂
I’m not a master of fiction, neither have I ever composed any fiction story, but I used to think that the Voynich Manuscript might have been the central theme of an excellent Sherlock Holmes novel. “The Adventure of the Old Manuscript”, you know. The problem, of course, is that, to be successful with such novel, the author needs to know the solution. 🙂
“I wrote it to please female readers, but first and foremost to please myself.”
– Linnet Moss is a guy.. fr shure.
Koen: wash your mouth out with soap! Some words are beyond the pale, even anagrammed. 🙂