Nothing Natural

A woman enters into a S&M relationship with an aloof but enticing man—and later suspects him of committing a horrific crime—in this provocative novel about eroticism, despair, and the gulf between our desires and our ideals.

When Rachel is set up at a dinner party with Joshua, a friend of a friend, she is not at first particularly enthused. Divorced, in her thirties, the mother of a young child, and prone to bouts of depression, Rachel likes sex and friendship plenty, but hates the commitment and domesticity that comes with being in a typical relationship. Fortunately, Joshua doesn’t want any commitment beyond the physical; moreover, he enjoys dominating his lovers in the bedroom.

The two of them begin an erotic entanglement that Rachel finds darkly thrilling—but also troubling to reconcile with her devout feminism. One day Rachel sees a rough sketch in the paper of a man wanted by the police for a “sex attack.” Could it be Joshua? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The line between reality and fantasy blurs, as Rachel struggles to hold on to her sense of self, and stay true to her desires...

Nothing Natural was Jenny Diski’s first novel, and it is her finest, a provocative exploration of power, eroticism, female desire, and female despair. A tale of the conscious at odds with the unconscious, reminiscent of the films of Catherine Breillat, Diski’s novel is as seductive and subversive now as ever.