Peter Lefcourt
Eleven Karens

First published in hardback by Simon & Schuster, on 2003 January 2 in the USA and on 2003 March 1 in Australia, ISBN 0-684-87034-7.

What do you do if, reviewing your love life from the vantage point of middle age, you realise that a statistically-improbable number of your girlfriends have shared the same name? If you are an author, then you write about it. At least, that is the fictional basis of Peter Lefcourt's Eleven Karens. The narrator, named only as "Mr L", chronicles his education in the ways of women through his eleven relationships with Karens.

While love and friendship feature in the stories, the common theme is sex. Anticipating it, getting it, not getting it. Yet this is not a pornographic book, and, while it is sometimes erotic, it is never really smutty. Also, the sexual enounters are always in context and consistent with the characters' attitudes and quirks.

Where there is sex, usually there will be nudity, and Eleven Karens is no exception to that rule of thumb. However, there is also non-sexual nudity, with one of the Karens being a practising nudist. The narrator meets her while working for the summer at the Sunnydell Ranch naturist resort. This is not a weak excuse for easy access to sex, since Lefcourt neatly demolishes the nudity=sex theory by telling the reader about the "Volleyball Effect". As you can read in the extracts, he points out that: "there is something inherently detumescent about volleyball, archery, Ping-Pong, and the other noncontact sports that are big among the naturists. Call it the Volleyball Effect." Lefcourt also shows how a beautiful girl is vastly less arousing if she persists in keeping the conversation centred on heavy-duty sociological topics. (Note that this is at odds with what happens in the books by Robert Rimmer, where much of the dialogue centres on this subject.)

All is not lost for Mr L, and before long he and naturist Karen are balling their brains out all over Sunnydell Ranch. Summer ends, but not the relationship. It staggers on briefly before its inevitable termination. Karen Myers becomes just one more chapter in Mr L's book of life - although Lefcourt does give her a terrific punchline on which to bow out.

Like many other books reviewed on this site, Eleven Karens mixes sex and social nudity. Yet Lefcourt does not suggest or assume that naturism is about sex, or even sexy; on the contrary, the "Volleyball Effect" proposes exactly the opposite. While I have never been to an American naturist resort, or even to the USA, I find Lefcourt's Sunnydell Ranch entirely believable (apart from one use of artistic licence over a topographical detail). This is partly because Lefcourt visited just such an establishment in the sixties; not for a full summer, but for more than long enough to experience the force of the Volleyball Effect! In my view, there's nothing wrong with making fun of naturists or naturism, particularly when fun is made of everyone else to a greater or lesser extent. Lefcourt even pokes fun at writers and readers, both by the teasing way in which he tries to keep one guessing about just how fictional the story is, and by the deliberate use of footnotes. The latter could be irritating if you let them, but I enjoyed the way the reader is assumed to need to be informed about D H Lawrence, The Waltons and Giverny, but not about Henry James or Piaf or Samoa.

Lefcourt is an author whose clear primary objective is to entertain the reader. He is not attempting great art, he makes no pretensions to have his work treated as literature. This does not mean that he ignores style, or is in any way sloppy - he is way above the level of such as Timothy Lea, and he takes care to develop his characters and their stories. This reader was entertained, and recommends this amusing pseudo-memoir, including its cheerful naturist episode.

An edited version of this review appeared in the November 2005 issue of H&E Naturist magazine.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2005 September 17.
 
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