The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Kink by Kathe Koja
Irving Malin

Kathe Koja. Kink. Holt, 1996. 278 pp. $23.00.

The cover of this haunting novel is a photograph of a partly nude woman—we see her breasts, but not the lower part of her body—but she does not arouse us; she seems to be distracted, lost in thought. The word kink is separated; each letter lives in its own space. The cover is brown-black. The cover points the way to the text because it “shadows” body and text, deceives us by its odd “slants.” It is kinky.

The epigraph intensifies the perverse turns: “I hate the aesthetics of the world. I create the enclosure that becomes the world.” The epigraph in a strange way fights the aesthetic qualities of the jacket; it suggests that we create our “enclosures,” our worlds. Thus we are prepared to find a text that is duplicitous, frustrating, deconstructive. And when we read the words of the male narrator, who likes his Sophie to listen to the sexual noises of neighbors, we are inclined to take his “game” in a philosophical way. The emphasis is captured in these broken words. Sophie (wisdom?) says: “They don’t know.” Then she adds: “nobody knows.” The scene, with its “broken” quality, suggests that knows is the key word. Does the narrator know Sophie? Does Sophie know him? Do they know that they are known by their neighbors?

The narrator soon finds himself in a “fantastic,” frenzied relationship with Sophie and Lena, a mysterious woman. He sleeps with both, but he somehow recognizes that he doesn’t understand what is “going on.” Does he “love” Lena more than Sophie? Do the women use him as pawn? He tells us: I don’t know “kink,” especially “conscious kink.”

Koja keeps using images of distortion—of mirrors, of “frustrated gaze”—and she skews her syntax. Here is a representative sentence: “And so the first time we made love as a trio—long legs drawn up, closed eyes and stroking hands—was not less momentous but less remarkable, it was what should happen, there were no surprises left.” Passive and active; “sentences” within one long sentence—the words surprise us; they are most curiously joined. The text becomes a “sacred jest” or “a circle in the fire”—two of the titles of the three (!) sections—and the mixture of “sacred” and “jest” and “circle in the fire”—how do we know when comedy is sacred? when circles remain as circles within an engulfing fire?—seems to be a reflection of the entire text (and the sexual relationships in the text).

This (un)decidedly kinky text is an erotic, epistemological thriller. It almost watches us secretly. [Irving Malin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Kink by Kathe Koja Irving Malin Kathe Koja. Kink. Holt, 1996. 278 pp. $23.00. The cover of this haunting novel is a photograph of a partly nude woman—we see her breasts, but not the lower part of her body—but she does not arouse us; she seems to be distracted, lost in thought. The word kink is separated; each letter lives in its own space. The cover is brown-black. The cover points the way to the text because it “shadows” body and text, deceives us by its odd “slants.” It is kinky. The epigraph intensifies the perverse turns: “I hate the aesthetics of the world. I create the enclosure that becomes the world.” The epigraph in a strange way fights the aesthetic qualities of the jacket; it suggests that we create our “enclosures,” our worlds. Thus we are prepared to find a text that is duplicitous, frustrating, deconstructive. And when we read the words of the male narrator, who likes his Sophie to listen to the sexual noises of neighbors, we are inclined to take his “game” in a philosophical way. The emphasis is captured in these broken words. Sophie (wisdom?) says: “They don’t know.” Then she adds: “nobody knows.” The scene, with its “broken” quality, suggests that knows is the key word. Does the narrator know Sophie? Does Sophie know him? Do they know that they are known by their neighbors? The narrator soon finds himself in a “fantastic,” frenzied relationship with Sophie and Lena, a mysterious woman. He sleeps with both, but he somehow recognizes that he doesn’t understand what is “going on.” Does he “love” Lena more than Sophie? Do the women use him as pawn? He tells us: I don’t know “kink,” especially “conscious kink.” Koja keeps using images of distortion—of mirrors, of “frustrated gaze”—and she skews her syntax. Here is a representative sentence: “And so the first time we made love as a trio—long legs drawn up, closed eyes and stroking hands—was not less momentous but less remarkable, it was what should happen, there were no surprises left.” Passive and active; “sentences” within one long sentence—the words surprise us; they are most curiously joined. The text becomes a “sacred jest” or “a circle in the fire”—two of the titles of the three (!) sections—and the mixture of “sacred” and “jest” and “circle in the fire”—how do we know when comedy is sacred? when circles remain as circles within an engulfing fire?—seems to be a reflection of the entire text (and the sexual relationships in the text). This (un)decidedly kinky text is an erotic, epistemological thriller. It almost watches us secretly. [Irving Malin]

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