Saskia Vogel

Echo's father fell from the cliffs by her home overlooking the ocean. They were on a hike together, and suddenly, he was all alone. The body was never recovered. In the wake of this accident, Echo and her mother are adrift. Her parent's marriage was turbulent and much resentment remains. Echo is a failed actress who has already aged out of the industry at twenty-two. Her career disappointments pair with her grief to render her directionless. But when she makes friends with her neighbor - show more Orly, a dominatrix - she begins to reexamine her mental life and believes that her life could be different.

This is a very thoughtful book which delves into human intimacy and desire and how to love someone with respect to their preferences. A tender and lyrical meditation upon the greatest themes of life. show less

A gripping, beautifully written novella about a young woman grieving the sudden loss of her father and discovering the comfort and safety of control, pain, and release. The story follows Echo, who is a young, beautiful actress/model after the sudden loss of her father. Loss is a great word here, because he is literally lost, his body never found, confounding the grief Echo and her mother feel. Echo feel guilty of having been scared of the ocean and the rocks, having somehow caused he show more father's fall from the slippery rocks into the swallowing ocean, never to return him. Echo's mother also has come complex grief to deal with, as the relationship was permanently on the rocks (ha!) Stuck in a stagnant place in her career, lost in her love/sex life with men who don't seem to want what she wants or see her, dividing her time between her career flat and the house on the bluffs with her mother, Echo meets Orly, the dominatrix next door.

The story also follows Orly's housemate, a man Orly calls Piggy. From his failed marriage and shameful dismissal from a job to the suffering of the emergence of his desires and finally finding Orly, and building a sustainable, empowering friendship and partnership. How Piggy and Orly's relationship will change with Echo in the picture is the crux of the story.

BDSM is treated well and with full understanding in the novel, its everyday complications, its pleasures and dangers, its demands for study and learning and respect all well laid out and worked in to this delicate, smart story. The characters are real people who come at it from very different places and have different ways of learning it, experiencing it, and understanding it. In this sense, a fantastic primer.

Echo's relationships with the two men she has interactions with throughout the novel come at a good time with the MeToo movement. There is a blurring of want and need and desire and transaction. There is also a clear boundary, that, when crossed, is sharp and painful and unacceptable. The encounter with the father of a former (female) lover from high school is rather jarring, and Echo suffers from the shock for a while, just like the grief of her father's death continues to affect her every decision and feeling throughout the story.

Overall, I enjoyed Permission a lot. High recommended, especially for those who like trespassing beach property, surfing, smoking, and lost car keys.

Thanks to LibraryThing and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. I enjoyed this novel immensely. show less

After a bit of a slow start, I fell into this story of sexual exploration in the wake of intense loss.

Echo’s father is suddenly gone: an accident on slick rocks on the California coast. She and her mother are sent reeling through grief, neither sure how to deal with their own or the other’s.

When she meets a new neighbor, Echo feels an instant attraction. Learning she’s a dominatrix only steeps her interest.

In looking at BDS&M, this book has more to say about the nature of love and show more respect than I would have expected from such a short book. It’s not going to be for everyone, but if you are curious about that lifestyle, I think you’ll enjoy it. show less

This novel looks at the life of 26-year-old Echo, who is struggling with grief and finding her way through.

She has been a working actor, but now the jobs are drying up as their are other younger women on the scene. Her friends begin to disappear as the work dries up. Then her father disappears and is presumed drowned while she and he are hiking on the cliffs near their house in Palos Verdes. She moves home from her apartment downtown. Her mother is deeply depressed.

Echo picks up some work show more modelling at the local art college, but then her high school best friend's father is in the class--this is the man who ended their friendship when he caught them kissing. Seeing him does not help with her grief. She then meets the neighbor Orly, who is a dominatrix. Orly introduces Echo to the world of foot fetishes and the work available.
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For me, the best part of this book was in the descriptions of LA. I think this is the first novel I have read set largely in Palos Verdes. But Vogel gets LA, and the descriptions are accurate and sometimes funny. Finding parking, jacaranda trees and their mess, directions, the stale hot apartment, the constant landslide. This story is LA, the two can't be separated. show less