100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed »

An instant blockbuster in Italy where it has sold over 700,000 copies, and now an international literary phenomenon, 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed is the fictionalized memoir of Melissa P., a Sicilian teenager whose quest for love rapidly devolves into a shocking journey of sexual discovery.

Melissa begins her diary a virgin, but a stormy affair at the age of fourteen leads her to regard sex as a means of self-discovery, and for the next two years she plunges into a succession of encounters with various partners, male and female, her age and much older, some met through schoolmates, others through newspaper ads and Internet chat rooms. In graphic detail she describes her entry into a Dante-esque underworld of eroticism, where she willingly participates in group sex and sadomasochism, as well as casual pickups. Melissa's secret life is concealed from family and friends, revealed only in her diary entries.

Told with disarming candor, Melissa P.'s bittersweet tour of extreme desires is as poignant as it is titillating. One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed is a stunning erotic debut, a Story of O for our times.

Publishers Weekly

A scandalous bestseller in her native Italy, Melissa P.'s avowedly autobiographical novel recounts a Sicilian schoolgirl's erotic adventures. "I want love, Diary," she writes just before her 15th birthday. "I want to feel my heart melt, want to see my icy stalactites shatter and plunge into a river of passion and beauty." Love may be hard to find, but sex waits at every turn, and Melissa seldom says no. In calmly vivid prose, she describes the varieties of experience, beginning with her introduction to oral sex: "I now had it before my eyes, it smelled male, and every vein that crossed it expressed such power that I felt duty-bound to reckon with it." This same sense of duty mandates sex with a woman, sex with an older man, sadomasochistic sex, group sex. Although her mother tells an ill Melissa a fable about a princess, Melissa tells herself no fairy tales-and therein lies the odd, potent purity of these pages. Agent, Anna Stein at Donadio & Olsen. (Oct.) Forecast: When the author turned 18, she revealed her family name of Panarello. But Melissa P. she is here (think The Sexual Life of Catherine M). Readers who recall the impact of 18-year-old Fran oise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse may prefer to shelve her with that other prodigy. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.