"I watched the glaze of headlights, the windscreens of oncoming cars: a series of trapezoids with the silhouette of a single male driver. One pulled up in front of me; I reached over and opened the door, slid in. The smell of an unfamiliar car. A middle-aged man looking at me. 'Hi', I said. 'How are you?"...
'There was no single moment when someone looked at Kate Holden and said, 'Why don't you have some?' No one made her try heroin. There was only the sense, with her friends setting out on this forbidden adventure, that she would lose something if she didn't. Just once: to know. So this book is the story of a journey. From a loving family home to the streets of St Kilda; from a shy, bookish life to the ambivalent glamour of an inner-city brothel, Kate Holden describes with breathtaking lyricism and poignancy her travels in an unknown world. Contains explicit sexual scenes.' (Source: Vision Australia Information and Library Service)
The Romantic : Italian Nights and Days
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2010
Z1715303
2010
single work
autobiography
'This is the spellbinding follow-up to Kate Holden's memoir In My Skin, but it has a different story to tell. The Romantic describes Kate's journey from Melbourne to Rome and Naples, from romance and sex to love, from loss to understanding—and back again.
'This is a book about everything from sex with strangers to the heartbreaking realities of being in love. It's about the pride of fierce independence and the crushing weight of loneliness. It's about losing yourself in love and then finding yourself through your lover.
'But most of all, The Romantic is the story of one woman's pilgrimage to discover who she really is. And to learn to like what she finds.' (From the publisher's website.)
Kate Holden explores her curiosity at the use of pseudonyms by women writers of erotic literature. She concludes 'Playfulness, coyness, mystique and titillation are part of the erotic. In the age of bold women and admirable authors, though, it seems a shame to be so shy. It may be that "Anonymous" has the allure of teasing seduction, but a tease can go on only so long before it starts to look like apprehension.'
