The Surrender

The Surrender (2004) by Toni Bentley
ReganBooks
ISBN: 9780060732462
Condition: Very Good

Includes a promotional flyer for the book featuring a distinctly rude image — more anatomical than erotic.

Toni Bentley’s The Surrender is one of those books that arrives under the vague heading of memoir and then very quickly demonstrates that it has absolutely no intention of behaving itself.

Subtitled elsewhere as a meditation on sex, desire and surrender, Bentley’s book is intensely personal, deliberately provocative and considerably more explicit than anything likely to be recommended by your local parish newsletter.

A former ballet dancer, Bentley writes with the precision of someone used to discipline, control and physical awareness, then applies that same seriousness to a subject considerably less likely to appear in a respectable dance programme.

At the centre of the book is her exploration of a particular form of sexual surrender and the psychological, emotional and spiritual meanings she attaches to it.

And yes, the book is explicit.

Very explicit.

Not “someone loosened a corset near a fireplace” explicit.

More “we should probably stop pretending this is coy” explicit.

Bentley is not interested in presenting sexuality as a decorative subplot or tasteful implication. She examines desire directly, sometimes analytically, sometimes lyrically, and sometimes in a manner likely to make readers suddenly very aware that they are reading this on public transport.

Yet the book is not simply written for shock.

What makes The Surrender unusual is Bentley’s attempt to connect physical experience with larger questions about identity, power, transcendence, trust and the strange human urge to turn bodily experience into philosophy.

Humanity has been doing this for thousands of years.

Usually with incense.

Bentley manages it with rather less incense.

The writing can be bold, self-conscious and unapologetically personal, and readers will probably divide fairly quickly into those who find it fearless and those who find themselves muttering, “Well, that’s certainly one way of putting it.”

Which is perhaps exactly the point.

The book occupies that curious borderland between erotic memoir, literary confession and philosophical meditation, where intensely private experience is turned into public argument.

This makes it interesting even beyond its sexual subject matter.

Bentley is concerned with what surrender means psychologically: what happens when control is relinquished, when identity is challenged, when an experience becomes significant not simply because of what physically occurs but because of what the person involved decides it means.

That, inevitably, is where the controversy begins.

One reader’s liberation is another reader’s bafflement.

One reader’s transcendence is another reader’s reason to put the kettle on and think about something else for a bit.

There is also something magnificently early-2000s about the whole project.

Before every private confession could immediately become a podcast, livestream or subscription newsletter, there was still something comparatively dramatic about publishing an intimate memoir between hard covers and sending it into bookshops to fend for itself.

And this particular copy has retained an especially memorable piece of publishing ephemera.

Included is a promotional flyer for The Surrender featuring an image that can reasonably be described as very rude.

Not glamorous.

Not coy.

Not especially romantic.

More the sort of thing that makes you briefly wonder whether the marketing department had collectively decided subtlety was an outdated concept.

It is probably best described as anatomical rather than erotic.

Collectors of unusual publishing material may regard this as an entertaining bonus.

Others may wish to leave the flyer inside the book rather than displaying it beside photographs of the grandchildren.

The presence of the flyer also gives this copy a little extra period interest, preserving not only the book itself but the gloriously unsubtle manner in which somebody once attempted to promote it.

For readers interested in candid memoir, sexuality, feminist writing, literary provocation or books that cause lively conversations when left on coffee tables, The Surrender is certainly memorable.

Whether it is profound, outrageous, liberating, excessive or all four simultaneously will depend entirely on the reader.

This copy is in Very Good condition and includes the original promotional flyer with its distinctly adult image.

Available from Crappy Old Books, where most books arrive with bookmarks, receipts and old bus tickets, but occasionally one turns up with something considerably harder to explain.

Keep browsing: See more Biography books Other books by Toni Bentley