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SEXUAL
HEALING
(the debut novel )By
Jill Nelson
Reviews
With
SEXUAL
HEALING (Agate, June 2003; $23.95) Jill Nelson, author of
the best-selling Volunteer Slavery and Straight, No
Chaser, has written an outrageous new novel that’s as sexy
and compelling as it is smart, sharply observed, and scorchingly
funny. The result gives full rein to a voice that Terry McMillan
described as “boisterous, honest, and hilarious,” in a pop
page-turner that will have everyone talking about how Nelson’s
heroines turn the world’s oldest profession on its head.
Lydia
Beaucoup and Acey Allen are two childhood friends who’ve grown
up to become successful mid-career professionals. But having
reached 40, their career success is matched by their romantic
and sexual dissatisfactions. Sharing their frustrations over a
bottle of champagne, they hatch a plan: why not develop a new
business aimed at meeting the intimate needs of black women, in
an environment that’s discreet, safe, and most important of
all, completely focused on their needs, wants, and pleasures?
Thus is born the idea for A Sister’s Spa—a
“full-service” facility that supplies handsome black men
willing and able to fulfill their clientele’s every desire.
Launching the enterprise is a struggle, but the conflict is just
beginning: even as their delighted customer base grows, they
face attacks from grandstanding church and community leaders,
hostile media, malevolent business moguls, and other conniving
parties.
From
the most dignified black church in Oakland to sex-positive
small-town Nevada, from the racks of Loehmann’s to the
skyscraping executive suites of San Francisco, Sexual Healing
is a comedy of outraged manners for the 21st century,
a penetrating examination of sexual and racial politics, and a
hilariously frank and forthright exploration of what women
really want. Jill Nelson unleashes the storytelling abandon that
captivated readers of the award-winning Volunteer Slavery and
gives it full rein in what’s sure to be one of the hottest
books of this or any season.
*
* * * *
Sexual
Healing is a wild, sexy ride, in which two inventive and
hilarious sisters figure out a way to bring water into their
sexual desert—and yours, too. It’s a fearless look at what
women want, and a fresh take on how they can get it. If you enter
these pages lonely and wistful, you'll emerge refreshed and
invigorated, in body, mind, and soul.
--E.
Lynn Harris, A Love of My Own and Any Way the Wind
Blows
This
is the novel her fans have been hoping Jill Nelson would have
nerve enough to write!
Sexual
Healing is smart and sexy,
funny and fabulous, jazzy and justified! Sister Jill isn't just
a foot soldier in what passes for war between the sexes. She's
our commander-in-chief and follow we must.
--Pearl
Cleage, What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day and I
Wish I Had A Red Dress
In
Sexual Healing, Jill Nelson brings her formidable wit to
fiction. She pulls the covers off of American sex, demolishing
hypocrisy and double standards with a pen wielded like a
stiletto, drawing blood on every page.
--Ishmael
Reed, Another Day at the Front and From
Totems to Hip-Hop
In
a comic novel that is as insightful as it is irreverent, Jill
Nelson takes a bold look at sexual mores and gender
politics that will leave readers howling with laughter. Women
have been waiting for this one!
--Valerie
Wilson Wesley, Always True To You In My Fashion and Ain’t
Nobody’s Business If I Do
Call
it ‘Black Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough.’ In
her stellar
Sexual
Healing, Jill Nelson shows the sexual revolution isn't
over—it's just beginning.
--Farai
Chideya, Don’t Believe the Hype and The
Color of Our Future
*
* * * *
Reviews
of
Volunteer Slavery
Nelson's
voice is boisterous, honest and hilarious.
--Terry
McMillan
A
scalding, candid, mordantly funny book…No one, black or white,
man or woman, who has chafed at the quotidian affronts of the
modern-day workplace will fail to see themselves in this highly
personal account of a bad trip.
--Boston
Globe
The
same brutal honesty that allows [Nelson] to figuratively strip
herself naked also makes her credible…Nelson has explored one
woman's corporate hell in a way that is sometimes funny and
often sad and that reveals and explores a great deal of pain
that is not hers alone.
--Ellis
Cose, Newsweek
Angry
yet often very funny…may get attention because of its searing
attack on the Washington Post, but…it is, above all,
about identity and being black…[and] it is just plain
hilarious.
--New
York Times Book Review
Irresistible,
I couldn't put the book down…Nelson [writes with] the sardonic
wit and wistfulness of Terry McMillan…[bringing] to life the
experience of a smart black woman in the obdurately white world
of the media.
--Cynthia
Crossen, Vogue
Tumultuous,
funny, and ultimately wrenching. Nelson's scathing tell-all is
not for those with delicate sensibilities…It stings like salt
on an open wound. And no target is off-limits.
--Detroit
Free Press
*
* * * *
Reviews of
Straight No Chaser
Combines
autobiography, political analysis and self-help to discuss
unapologetically and courageously what ails the African-American
community at the turn of the new century.
--Beverly
Guy-Sheftall, New York Times
Book Review
Nelson,
at her best…melding together autobiography, political belief
and hard-hitting, in-your-face writing that says in no uncertain
terms: Here's my truth; deal with it.
--Lise
Funderburg, Newsday
A
primer for black women, written with candor, courage and wicked
wit.…Fans of Nelson's blunt, no-hold's-barred style won't be
disappointed…. This is Full Nelson--a fearless opinionator who
has something to say about virtually everything. Nelson has
succeeded in creating an impassioned call to action for black
women.
--Valerie
Boyd, Washington Post Book World
Argues
convincingly that black women need to raise a collective howl of
rage.
--Jill
Smolowe, Time
A
diatribe, a love song, a wake-up call, an ode, a wail, a funkified
slice of scholarship that teaches not the accepted lessons, but
the necessary ones. Everyone should read this book.
--Patricia
Smith, Boston Globe Agate
Publishers 1501 Madison St. Evanston, IL 60202
(847) 363-1830 |
