Two best friends Lydia and Acey, both black, successful, single and over forty decide one Sunday, after a champagne swilling session, that they are bored with their lives and inadequate sex. Something had to be done and that something was to open a brothel exclusively for black women called ‘A Sister’s Spa.’

The girls have been friends since school. Lydia is loud and raunchy, who says what she means and gets what she wants. A liberal upbringing by her prematurely widowed mother explains most of Lydia’s traits.

Acey is prim and moral. Her father was a preacher who suppressed her mother’s dreams and ambitions and left Acey with inhibitions. Acey was widowed when her husband Earl died in a boating accident and struggles to build a stable relationship with an unadventurous lawyer.

Once the women start to plan the business the story introduces interlinking subplots, producing vast quantities of characters.

Lydia meets and beds a paragon of black manhood, Odell who leaves Lydia’s bed to ‘impress’ Acey with his prowess. The two women, suitably satisfied proceed to employ Odell as the hiring agent of the many studs they require for their brothel.

Soon there are four, when the irrepressible LaShaWanda, who impresses them with her financial wizardry and sharp tongue, joins the trio.

Many protagonists enter the arena to provide the required conflict. Dick Dixmoor, a conservative business man who made millions on munitions and drug companies, wages a campaign against black male ‘superpredators’. He is drawn as a caricature of big bad corporate white America.

T.Terry Tiger, a rhyming charismatic leader of The Black Baptist Brotherhood and Boulé leads the Crusade to Resurrect Morality and pits his wits and his band of motley crusaders against ‘A Sister’s Spa.’

Nelson then adds in a couple of journalists, one an honest male, the other a bitchy scheming female. She introduces one odd ex husband and the ghost of another husband, then stirs in a sprinkling of splendid black male prostitutes with an eagerness to please the women guests. These combinations turn this novel into a piece of impure fun and hokum.

The novel is written from many changing perspectives, from the first person of Lydia and Acey to a third person voice. This allows the author to introduce aspects of the plot she would have otherwise been denied had she kept purely to the first or third person. Often the voices of Lydia and Acey are not distinct, which can be confusing and frustrating for the reader.

The book cover looks like a sex manual and although it may have been the intention of the author, the many sex scenes do read like a sex manual with a complete lack of eroticism.

A number of the characters are flat which may be a symptom of too many crammed into three hundred pages. The two main players have contrasting values, but their early relationship is explained to resolve this conundrum. The rapport between the two is touching and sweet, but doesn’t always ring true of a deep long-term relationship. The characters of LaShaWanda and Janette, T.Terry’s suffering girlfriend, although stereotyped caricatures, are rich and funny and provide some of the best lines from the novel.

The names and characters of the kooky religious sects can’t help but raise a smile; The united Federation Of Promojites; Rastafarian Association of Harlem; Chocolate Canaanites and the only oppressed women’s group Righteous Ebony Women After Respect and Power (REWARP)

The idea for the story is clever, but many of the storylines are convenient and obvious. Some plots have underlying social commentary which open questions of deeper issues around social barriers, race, class and gender. The author’s journalistic tendencies have often allowed these issues to dominate the main purpose of the book, which is to provide a raucous yarn of black women in pursuit of ideal sex. For fun and nonsense this book is a good holiday read although the cover may raise more than an eyebrow, but thought exactly thought provoking intelligent reading.

Moira McPartlin currently lives in Glasgow , but travels extensively with work. She started writing three years ago to relieve the boredom of airport lounges. She enjoys writing short stories and her passion for mountaineering and travel provides plenty of material for non fiction articles. Moira has yet to have any work published, but lives in hope. She is currently working on her first novel.

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.