Obsession: An Erotic Tale

by Gloria Vanderbilt

Book Review by Kristina Wright

People tend to take notice when an icon like Gloria Vanderbilt writes a novel.  When the 85-year old heiress decides to write an erotic novel, even the sex phobic New York Times is going to review it.  Obsession: An Erotic Tale will receive a lot of attention because of Ms. Vanderbilt’s fame and age and is just as likely to be dismissed by erotica connoisseurs for the same reasons, but it is a teasing little enigma of a book worth a second look.

At its core, Obsession is a love story with three principle characters.  Priscilla and Talbot Bingham are a beautiful, successful couple with the kind of beautiful, glittery life the author has always known.  Talbot is an architect, the type who stirs controversy and inspires jealousy and desire.  Priscilla is so in love with her beloved husband that when he dies (quite dramatically in the middle of their tenth anniversary party), she is carried away on a stretcher as well, overwrought by her grief.

Grief quickly turns into confusion, anger and—yes—obsession when Priscilla discovers a packet of letters addressed to Talbot from a woman named Bee.  The letters detail an exquisite affair of secret debauchery, with each letter more graphic than the one before.  Priscilla is horrified and mesmerized by this painfully revealing glimpse into her true love’s hidden life.  She reads Bee’s dirty missives until she is dreaming about being with her husband’s mysterious lover.  The fact that the two women are strikingly similar in appearance will have the reader questioning whether they are in fact two different people or two personalities in the same tormented soul.  The question is never answered, but it’s part of the books’ enigma.

Vanderbilt’s writing is filled with lurid descriptions and lush flourishes that would feel more at home in an erotic novel written for a previous generation.  This is not a straightforward contemporary stroke book (as if an heiress would write such a thing!),  but a puzzling tale of sex and obsession that liberally slips into the psyches of both women in a kind of kinky stream of conscience narrative.  Priscilla is not particularly likeable and Bee is the one who seems to have the upper hand—after all, she knew all of Talbot’s secrets, even if she only had him part time.  Talbot is the real mystery.  His death makes it impossible to know his character except through the eyes of these two very different women.

Parts of Obsession read as if it’s a roman à clef, and one has only to look at Ms. Vanderbilt’s rich and varied romantic life to suspect she is drawing on some personal experiences here.  The story is entertaining for its brevity (this is a slim little 128-page hardcover) and the sex is reminiscent of the classic erotic novels, filled with scented oils and glittering powders, natural aphrodisiacs and exotic masked women.  There are sex toys and blindfolds and descriptions of domination and submission, as well.  Ms. Vanderbilt knows her way around a sexual fantasy, to be sure.

Obsession is unlikely to become a classic erotic novel simply because it doesn’t go far enough, sexually or psychologically.  However, for those who like their erotica with a mysterious literary twist, Obsession will delight.

Kristina Wright
August 2009

Obsession: An Erotic Tale by Gloria Vanderbilt
(Ecco, June 23, 2009; ISBN-10: 0061734896)
Available at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

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© 2009 Kristina Wright. All rights reserved.

About the Author: Kristina Wright is an award-winning author who loves writing stories that are emotionally compelling and sexually charged. Her erotica and erotic romance fiction has appeared in over sixty print anthologies. She holds a B.A. in English, a M.A. in Humanities and is entertaining the idea of pursuing a Ph.D. For more information about Kristina's writing and other interests, you can visit her website www.kristinawright.com.

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