One Hundred Strokes of the Brush before Bed

This book was an impulse buy while vacationing in Rio without the benefit of looking it up before purchase. The premise is intriguing – a 15/16 year old Italian girl’s genuine diary tells her tale of seeking love but instead surrounded by sex in all the wrong ways.

It’s pretty easy to hate this book. Skepticism and disgust readily crowds the mind. I had wanted to be the reader to say – for xyz reasons/hints/clues, this supposedly diary is real. Instead, it’s easier to believe it’s fake because I don’t want it to be real – that I would not wish such a journey on anyone and certainly not for any parent to think their precious daughter to have gone down this path to find love.

Elements that make this book feels like a diary show more – whining about her parents like a typical teenager would, choppy sometimes incoherent thoughts, and inclusion of different elements in life beyond the sex (earlier portions of the book).
Elements that make this book feels fake – the intensity and perhaps preposterousness of such a tale (hey, that’s what sells books – I bought it!), the absence of different elements in life beyond the sex (later portions of the book), the excessive freedom that she has with her parents, and where does she get the money to buy all her lingerie?? Lol.

How anyone can find this book erotic is beyond me; the circumstances are not.

Quotes:

On the desire for love:
“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.”

On the choice of sex before love – what a bad decision to make:
“…I do have a heart, Diary, even if he doesn’t notice it, even if perhaps no one ever will. And before I open it, I shall give my body to any man who comes along, for two reasons: because in devouring me he might taste my rage and bitterness and therefore experience a modicum of tenderness; and because he might fall so deeply in love with my passion that he won’t be able to do without it. ” show less

Stupidly, I fell for the hype. This book is touted as being "erotic" but due to the girl's age, its really nothing more than the exploitation of child abuse and the pedophiles she fell into the arms of. I found this to be very disturbing.

I found this ok to read, but not as candy-flossy as I'd expected. Not really candy-flossy at all, actually. Its supposedly the diary of a real teenage girl from Italy who goes through a period of sleeping with lots of different people, not in the best situations, because she's got a strange view of herself, relationships & the need to be loved. I say its supposed to be the diary of a real girl, because I'm not entirely convinced. I don't know of anyone who wrote or thought that way between the ages of 14-16, or could write such detailed accounts in a diary. The situations seemed a little too staged, & all the people she retells conversations with all seem to speak in the same way she does. There is probably a grain of truth behind it show more all, but to me it is a fictionalised account to a greater extent than is implied. But that doesn't detract from the book at all. The writing is really very good, even if she does have a tendency to string too many adjectives together. The sleazy content of it isn't used as a quick way to grab attention, because the writing & thoughts that come with the situations are educated & insightful. Its not a book I'd read again, but it was a good read for the little effort it took to get through. show less

A not so very erotic memoir, short on sweetness, short on romance, short sensuality. The lack of perception and art on her part perhaps speak to its authenticity. This is teen sex at its worst.

I'd heard so much about this book before reading it that perhaps my expectations were too high to begin with. The sex scenes seemed to me to be far more gratuitous than cathartic, and the character's self-examination didn't ever seem to actually get anywhere. The entire book was less cohesive than I'd hoped for, and from erotica, I expect something a bit racier; this book failed to meet my expectations from both a literary standpoint and an erotic one.

Something must have been lost in translation... I enjoyed a few pages out of the 170 or so; I did not enjoy the book as a whole for a number of reasons: 1) the writing was not especially erotic; 2) the supposedly naive voice changed to an experienced voice describing one of the SM events that ruined the suspension of disbelief that the book was an unedited diary; which leads to 3) the book only convinces as a biographical fiction of a mundane series of adolescent sexual encounters -- and therefore is just one among thousands of other such fluff.

I picked this book up from a bargain table, only it's spine visible. I know it's wrong to judge a book by its cover, but I like to think that a first attraction to a title is always something to be explored. And it was a bargain. Part way through the book, I started to question whether it was worth my time to finish it. The diary format made it very disjointed and the thoughts even more scattered. But it was such a quick read that I was to the end before I knew it. The ending was very hopeful, promising, although a little to brief of a turn.