11/1/17: I'm moving this October 2010 book review to the top of the blog today because I think Rae's book is brilliant, engrossing, and passionate. I want to be sure you know about this sexy memoir. -- Joan
"Where are the books by and for women over 50 that deal honestly with sexuality?" I've asked myself for years. Dozens of self-help books for our age group have appeared in the past four years, thank goodness, but where are the sexually honest novels and memoirs that talk about our lives, our passions, our desires, our sexuality, our inner lives? Finally -- Free Fall: A Late in Life Love Affair by Rae Padilla Francoeur arrives with honesty and sizzle.Free Fall is an erotic memoir and much more. Rae Padilla Francoeur, age 58, begins a love affair with Jim, age 67. It's hot, very hot, explosively hot. Rae describes the passionate details -- how he touches and controls her body, how her passions smolder, build, and erupt. As graphic as her details are, I'm pleased that she uses language our generation is comfortable with -- penis, vagina -- instead of the edgier language that characterizes most contemporary erotica.
And, oh my, this book is beautifully written:
I am shameless. I will slide over every inch of him, kissing him back, wrestling in all that sweat to stay on top. I am sure I will never get enough of him. He will find this out and, being the man he is, he will revel in trying to find the outer limits of my stamina and prowess. He never will.
...
I've become so still and quiet and deep in the zone where my brain is one massive sensor hooked into the places he touches and the places I touch. There is nothing else. I'm all body.
...
We're kissing each other like the end of time is on the other side of the door. We kiss like this for ten or fifteen minutes until suddenly Jim stops it all. He steps back. He pulls my skirt over my hips. He takes my hand and places it on his penis.
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| Rae Padilla Francoeur |
The title refers to more than Rae's "free fall" into later-life passion. Like all of us, her love affair doesn't happen in a vacuum. Much of the book deals with her other "free fall" -- her relationship with Eli, her partner of many years, who is losing his battle with bipolar disorder. Rae loves him deeply, though her love is more brotherly than loverly by now, but she must choose herself over Eli if she is to survive. Eli's story grips us as much as Rae's love affair with Jim.
Free Fall: A Late in Life Love Affair
is one of the best books I've read in years. I hope you'll read it for yourself, and let us know what you think.