Nothing Natural, Jenny Diski, 1986

1986 was a very important year: I caused my mother a lot of trouble in the breastfeeding department and Jenny Diski (the brilliant, cutting and prolific essayist, novelist and critic) had her novel Nothing Natural banned (side note: every woman worth knowing has a banned book- even Julianne Moore's children's book about freckles has been forbidden in schools run by the Department of Defense, which would be hilarious if it wasn't so fucking scary.)

Read in the harsh fluorescence of 2025, Nothing Natural doesn't start out all that shocking- a single mother gets spanked within an inch of her life by a not very hot guy she meets at a party, rather than stay in her kind but bloodless marriage. A pinch of Fifty Shades, a dollop of Little Children. The shittier this man acts, the more unable to control her desire she is. WHAT WOMAN IN BROOKLYN HATH NOT EXPERIENCED SUCH A GAME.

But the novel grows perverse in ways no one could anticipate, until it reaches a stunning crescendo that is terrifying but never simplistic, heartbreaking yet ice cold. I know that most of us were made from an act of sex, but wow, fornicating is not for the faint of heart.