Justin Aveneer [Paperback]

An underground classic

A dazzling inverted pastiche of de Sade, Justin Aveneer is set in a world where women use men as work objects in all the ways that, historically, men have treated women as sex objects. Straight after reading this manuscript, Angela Carter set to and wrote her Passion of New Eve, followed by Sadeian Woman. Feminists and humanists everywhere will respond strongly to the dark mirror it holds up to exploitation of one sex by another.

One woman friend, herself lesbian, said O God yes! That's just how it is! Others have found it both tragic and touching.

Anthony Crofts has worked all his life as a journalist and social activist; and thought that turning the equation upside down, with women behaving in all the disgusting ways men have traditionally done, and men suffering the same restrictions and humiliations as women, would make the point shockingly clear. It actually turned out very black, blue and at times bitterly funny.

Then, he came to mowing the lawn, when the sun had moved round so that all but the back wall of the garden was in shadow. The machine was there, all ready put out - a small electric handmower which had to be swung from side to side in wide arcs. By this time Justin was already tired, and aware that his stomach had gone unfilled all day. But he stood, in the lengthening shade, swinging easily from the waist, with the whirling machine at arm's length. Still the girl watched; now with her head cocked to one side and an evaluating expression around her mouth, at the smooth pivoting action of his spine, the strong retaining sinews running from his shoulder down towards his lower arm; the buttressing of his deltoids which stopped his head from flopping from side to side. She watches as if she owns him; and, in a sense, she does.