Suzanne takes you down

-- 'I wanted it to be about my journey,' says 'Suzanne Portnoy' (nom de plume). 'I didn't want it to be just bonking.' Portnoy, an articulate vivacious London publicist in her mid-forties, has written an erotic memoir, The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker (Virgin books, £7.99) detailing her post-divorce sexual awakening after a 10-year marriage, the latter four of which she spent miserable, frustrated and celibate.

Did I say awakening? A more accurate term might be 'explosion'. Gritty and explicit, it joins the growing female 'erotic odyssey' genre sparked by Belle de jour (A Round Heeled Woman; The Bride Stripped Bare; The Sexual Life of Catherine M). Portnoy takes the reader on a no-holds-barred tour of swinging, saunas, group sex, fetish clubs, sex with strangers in the lunch hour, online hook-ups, and what she terms 'pleasure without commitment'.

'I'm the urban myth,' smiles Portnoy. 'I'm the woman men wish they could meet but don't believe exists.' --