In the tradition of erotic confession (with a catch), as delicately written as the tales of Anaïs Nin or Pauline Reage, Smith’s pornographic novel explores female desire. The unnamed narrator – gorgeous, sophisticated, bored, underemployed – embarks on a series of intense urban encounters in an unnamed city. Her desire is limitless: passionate, playful, intense, humorous and without reserve. Part Jean Genet, part Molly Bloom, part Penthouse Letters, Diana is a literary experiment, a modernist tale told in deft prose, whose goal is to arouse and to paint a sexual portrait of a city. Diana: A Diary in the Second Person is a novel about seduction and desire, a pornographic tale by one of our most celebrated and talented novelists.
“Russell Smith is not Canada’s greatest writer. A formidable cohort of older authors, preeminently Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant, will have to retire from competition before Smith has a shot at that title. But for more than a decade he has been, for me at least, Canada’s most fascinating writer, the author whose new books and stories I most eagerly anticipate, whose fiction I approach with a hopeful curiosity grounded in the fact that his early novels gave me a great deal of pleasure and each new volume, whether successful or not, shows a strenuous effort to expand his literary range.”—Jeet Heer, Canadian Notes and Queries
“It’s unrelentingly smutty, but it’s also a valuable reflection on sexuality in our lives and the importance we place on it, and what we can gain from being comfortable in our own skin.”—Nom De Plume Press