One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed [Paperback]

This summer?s highlight from Serpent?s Tail: the book that scandalised a nation. One Hundred Strokes has sold over 700 000 copies in Italy. One very hot Italian summer, a schoolgirl sits alone in her bedroom, staring at posters of Marlene Dietrich and listening to classical music. She strips before her mirror, examining her adolescent body pleasurably, yet without desire. She writes: ?I want love, diary. I want to feel my heart melt, to see the stalactites of my ice shatter and sink in the river of passion, of beauty.? The narrator searches for love but the men she meets only want sex. With the pain of unrequited love comes the excitement caused by her discovery of the sexual power she has over men (and other women). This diary of a teenage girl?s sex life is a work of deceptive innocence. Influenced by Nabokov and Anais Nin, it is both erotic and literary. When the book was first published, it was assumed that this could not be the work of a teenager. In fact it is the first novel of a young writer of great literary talent. ?Remarkably self-assured... the shock waves of this schoolgirl?s confession are still reverberating? The Times ?This book is remarkable. With any luck it will utterly scandalize the people who still think of teenage girls as half-formed dolls in pretty boxes. A warm and sexy read.? BelleDeJour.com ?A wisp of a book with a wallop of an impact? New York Times ?Catherine Millet can go put her clothes on. Seventeen years old, Melissa P. has become a literary phenomenon in Italy... a real literary talent in the Sicilian fabular tradition of Giovanni Verga? Les Echos

Melissa Panarello was born in Sicily in 1985 and now lives in Rome. Her teenage diaries formed the basis of One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, the book that scandalised Europe.

100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed by Melissa P. Leadtext: Diary, I'm writing in my shadowy room plastered with Gustav Klimt prints and posters of Marlene Dietrich. As she levels her languid, haughty gaze at me, I scribble across a white page that reflects the sunlight seeping through the chinks in the blinds. It's hot, a dry, torrid heat. I hear the sound of the TV in the next room, and my sister's tiny voice reaches me as she harmonizes with the theme song of some cartoon. Outside a cricket screeches like there's no tomorrow, but inside a soft peacefulness has descended on the house. Everything seems safely enclosed in a bell jar of the most delicate glass, and the heat weighs down every movement. But inside me there's no peace. It's as if a mouse were gnawing away at my soul, so gently that it even seems sweet. I'm not ill, but I'm not quite well; what's worrying is that "I'm not." Still, I know how to find myself: all I need do is lift my eyes and fix them on the reflection in the mirror, and a soft, peaceful happiness will possess me. I admire myself before the mirror, and I'm transported by the figure gradually emerging there, by the muscles that have assumed a firmer, more defined shape, by the breasts that are now noticeable beneath pullovers and bob gently at every step. Ever since I was little, my mother has innocently wandered around the house nude, so I've grown accustomed to observing the female body, and a woman's figure is no mystery to me. Still, an impenetrable forest of hair hides the Secret and conceals it from sight. Often, with my image reflected in the mirror, I slip my finger inside, and as I look into my eyes, I'm filled with a feeling of love and admiration for myself. The pleasure of observing me is so intense and powerful that it immediately turns physical, starting with a twitch and ending with an unusual warmth and a shudder, which lasts a few moments. Then the embarrassment comes. Unlike Alessandra, I never fantasize when I touch myself. A while ago she confided to me that she too touches herself, and she said when she does it she likes to imagine she's being possessed by a man, hard, violently, as if she were going to be hurt. Gosh, I thought, and here I get excited simply by looking in the mirror. She asked me if I also touched myself, and my answer was no. I absolutely don't want to destroy this pillowed world I've constructed, a world of my own, whose only inhabitants are my body and the mirror. Answering yes would have been a betrayal. The only thing that really makes me feel good is the image I behold and love; everything else is make-believe. My friendships are fake, born by chance and raised in mediocrity, utterly superficial. The kisses I timidly bestow on boys at my school are fake: as soon as I press my lips on theirs, I feel a kind of repulsion-and I bolt whenever I feel their clumsy tongues slipping into my mouth. This house is fake, so far removed from my current state of mind. I want every picture to be suddenly torn from the walls, a freezing, glacial cold to penetrate the windows, the howling of dogs to replace the crickets' song. I want love, Diary. I want to feel my heart melt, want to see my icy stalactites shatter and plunge into a river of passion and beauty.