The Ages of Lulu is an illuminating work of the young but veteran Spanish literateur Almudena Grandes about
the intense erotic desires and sexual exploits of the fantasies an adolescent girl named Lulu. Her unbounded crave for sexual discovery and erotic ecstasy leads her to experiment with sex in myriad forms including voyeurism, homoeroticism, incest, and paves the way for her ultimate degradation. The importance of her work will be known from the fact that the book has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide and is translated in 21 languages. This groundbreaking fiction of sexual exploration triggered widespread controversy when it was first published in Spain in 1989. It bagged the Sonrisa Vertical Prize for erotic fiction, and subsequently was made into a film by Bigas Luna starring Fransesca Neri & Javier Bardem.
Lulu, who got the first taste of sex by her brother’s friend Pablo, finally marries Pablo, and they live in their own private world, experimenting with various kinds of love and sex. away However, their world of intense sexual exploration is tattered when Pablo forces Lulu to cross the limit. Lulu satisfies her weird erotic cravings through feverish exploration of sexual perversion and reaches a point of no return. Through her novel, Grandes once again reminds us that it is only a woman who can describe the intense erotic feelings of a woman, and explore her sexuality with expertise and authority. This passage is a clear example of the foregone:`I’m going to shave your cunt.’ `No way!’ I flung myself forward with all my might and tried to get up, but I couldn’t. He was much stronger than me.. . .`I’m going to shave it and you’re going to let me. . . . .`Why are you doing this ?’ `Because you’re very dark; you’re too hairy for a fifteen year-old. You don’t have a little girl’s cunt. And I like little girls with little girls’ cunts, especially when I’m about to mean, this isn’t much more undignified than shoving a flute up you, or a recorder, or whatever it’s called…’ . . .`But they’ll notice at home and if Amelia sees she’ll blab to Mummy, and Mummy’ll. . .’ `How is Amelia going to find out? I didn’t know you got up to things together at night.’ . . . `Oh, right, well, don’t worry about that. I ‘ll leave your pubis almost exactly the same; I’m only going to shave the lips.’ `What lips?’ `These.’ He slid two of his fingers over them. . .`Hold them open with your hand, will you please?’ I obeyed. `And go on telling me. What did you do when Amelia saw you?’ I felt the touch of the razor-blade, and his fingers strtching my skin, while I went on, spitting out the words like a machine gun. He picked up a towel, dipped a corner into another bowl and squeezed it out over my pubis, which was almost unchanged, as he’d promised. `Let me do it.’ `No way. . .’. . .His fingers slid over my newly shaved labia, leaving the cream on my skin. I shivered again; it was ice cold.. . My sex looked like a little mound of red, swollen flesh. On either side of the central slit stretched two long white trails.. . My fingers touched the cream, which had become soft and warm, and started to spread it up and down, moving evenly over the slippery, smooth bare skin, which felt hot, like my legs in summer after they’d been waxed, until the two long white marks had completely disappeared. . .The temptation was too strong, and I let my fingers slip inside, once, twice, over the swollen stcky flesh. . .until I felt my body beginning to split in two, and I decided to speak. `I’m going. . .’ The triumph of a woman over the helplessness of a man when his vital organ is manipulated by her finds expression in Grandes words: “The second time, I dared to lick the tip. It tasted sweet. All the cocks I’ve ever tried in my life have tasted sweet, which doesn’t exactly mean they tasted good. . .The idea that he was at my mercy, that I’d only have to close my jaws and clench my teeth fora