Venus in Furs is famous chiefly because its author gave his name to the phenomenon that we now call masochism.
It’s frankly not really worth of any attention. It’s overwrought, hysterical, silly, baroque and tedious. Thankfully it’s short.
Penguin bill it as “as shocking exploration of masochism”, but in fact it has no power to shock us now. It all feels a bit like a strange mix between Sunset Boulevard and the Carry On films.
Without the ability to shock, the writing is left staid and repetitive. It is also, and this I didn’t expect at all, revoltingly mawkish. There is not one character here who we can care about or empathise with, and no writing that catches the imagination.
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