Desire in Seven Voices

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria, British Columbia.

Lorna Crozier invited seven celebrated Canadian female writers to write
about desire. They were all asked, “When do you trust your desire?
When do you censor it? When is it a source of power, and when a source
of distress?” The result, this book about the diversity of desire
centred in the female experience, collectively blurs the spaces between
fiction and fact.

In “Junkie Libido,” Susan Musgrave takes the clichéd image of the
love-junkie loner and turns her into someone exhilaratingly fresh. (Her
description of her first encounter with oral sex: “His penis started
shrinking right away. I had split him open and drained him and now he
was shrivelling like the unlucky banana slug. I wanted to spit, but,
having been brought up properly, I swallowed my mouthful instead.”)
Evelyn Lau explores her fixation on older, unattainable men in “Father
Figures.” Crozier’s own “Changing into Fire” gives us a precious
glimpse into her passions for her love and lover (presumably Patrick
Lane).

In “Silence and Exception,” Bonnie Burnard writes about not writing
about desire: “When we talk desire, aren’t we coaxing, badgering,
trying to take control? I have never wanted control.” In “Photo
Parentheses,” Shani Mootoo explores the meeting and merging of two
extremes within herself: her predetermined gender and the assigned
behavior it imposes on her skin and her desire. Dionne Brand, in
“Arriving at Desire,” recounts her discovery of desire and power
through literature. Carol Shields’s “Eros” tells of a woman
engaged in a verbal debate on desire, while simultaneously exchanging a
nonverbal experience.

The motivational core that has influenced art throughout history finds
new expression in this wonderful collection.