Book Reviews

Northern Ireland novel puts Christian Grey in the shade

Set in Northern Ireland, "The Pussy Pendulum" makes the Fifty Shades of Grey book seem like the report on a Sunday School outing.

American-born writer and model, now Belfast-based Suki Jensen-Ramirez takes the theme of sado-masochistic sexual violence out of the cosy millionaire jet-set mansion of the EL James epos and relocates it to a remote rural Donegal location where the house has its own dungeon and torture chamber.

After being kidnapped by her lover’s brother at Belfast City Airport Suki narrates her own “fictional” account of the treatment she received at the hands of the shady Kieran Fox and his dwarf henchman in the novel “The Pussy Pendulum.” Unlike the heroine in the Fifty Shades trilogy Suki is subjected to enforced bondage, multiple rape and repeated beatings. How does this fit into a supposedly comic-erotic novel though?

Suki Jensen-Ramirez comments: “The violence in “The Pussy Pendulum” is more of a cartoon violence interspersed with James Bond-style one-liners from the Suki character. Without giving too much away to spoil the climax for readers, you feel that the heroine always has something in reserve. She’s letting it happen but her sharp quips are intended to give the impression she still is in control. She is a strong woman with a voracious sexual appetite and no man is going to get the better of her.”

New Northern Ireland novel awakens those animal passions

CAT person Mrs Slocombe had problems with her pussy in BBC sitcom “Are you being served?” thirty years ago, but they are nothing compared to the difficulties faced by Suki Jensen-Ramirez in her debut novel “The Pussy Pendulum.”

          Gorgeous Suki, an American-born marketing executive based in Lisburn, gets into all sorts of scrapes in a comic adventure which takes her on the trail of Northern Ireland’s tourist attractions as well as on trips to Dublin, Barcelona, London and Donegal.

          Accompanying her along the way are individual members of a Belfast family - the Foxes - who each falls prey to her undoubted charms, leaving just about everyone in a spin.

          Not for the faint-hearted, the book takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride which can only turn out badly for the seemingly hapless heroine as she struggles to cope with the amorous attentions of all and sundry.

          Imagine “Fifty Shades of Grey” meets the Bundy family with a large slice of Woody Allen thrown in and you may come somewhere near to understanding what is going on.

          “The Pussy Pendulum” is feisty enough to awaken the most dormant of animal passions.

The Pendulum girl introduces Northern Ireland to the
world of Sex

AT LAST a novel that grabs nymphomania by the scruff of the neck and drags it out into the open, perhaps for the first time exposing the people of Northern Ireland to a world where SEX reigns supreme.

         “The Pussy Pendulum” is the semi-autobiographical debut novel of American-born marketing executive Suki Jensen-Ramirez, resident in Lisburn for the past thirteen years, who narrates her own story of love and lust involving a series of close encounters with a Belfast family of four, all of whom fall separate prey to her barely concealed charms.

         Billed as “fiction,” the story of Suki’s bisexual romps with hapless university professor Carl Fox, his student daughter Paula, footballing son Danny and beautiful wife Julie seems remarkably real set against the familiar background of the thriving modern city of Belfast and taking in trips to Dublin, London and Barcelona for some further cosmopolitan sexual adventures.

         Whether it’s cavorting with Paula at an ice-hockey game or with Professor Carl at various tourist attractions, there are no inhibitions holding back sexy Suki, though her tongue is probably more often in her own cheek than in the mouths of her various lovers.

         The whole chronicle is related with a refreshing
frankness and unmistakably American sense of humour which means that Suki’s seemingly never-ending appetite for more and better sex maintains the story’s momentum throughout. Try counting the number of her ear-splitting orgasms if you get bored by the detailed depictions of sex.

         There is also a darker side to the Pendulum girl’s
experiences as she is kidnapped and subjected to some quite harrowing enforced sexual practices which make the bondage and sado-masochistic goings-on in other works of fiction like EL James’ “Fifty Shades” trilogy seem pale by comparison.

         The pendulum of the title, by the way, is a piece of
genital jewellery which the perennially pantiless Suki wears to tantalise and perhaps shock her willing victims. It probably also symbolises her readiness to swing effortlessly from one sexual extreme to the other - one minute engaged in resolutely heterosexual communion and the next a Sapphic devotee with, who knows, the backdoor keys of at least a dozen condos on Lesbos to fall back on.

         Suki Jensen-Ramirez may just be the hottest thing to come out of Lisburn since Zoë Salmon took a wrong turn off the M1 at Sprucefield. Her first novel promises to be one of a “Pussy” series. It ends conventionally on a classic cliff-hanger climax which will leave you wondering what is still to come. One can only surmise that there are a lot more climaxes in the pipeline. Only question is - “Are the people out there ready for them?”